Osama bin Laden
This is my two cents on the death of Osama bin Laden. I'm going to put it out there, and disable comments where I can. This is solely my opinion, and I don't need trolls or arguments with friends to make me feel bad.
I consider myself to be a liberal (fiscal conservative/social liberal, really), and I frequently vote Democrat. I vote other things too, though rarely Republican. I am proud to live in the United States of America, though I am not always proud of the choices the people in charge make. I'm not religious, but agnostic. I'm not a pacifist -- I do believe that military intervention is sometimes called for. I think that "hate" generally damages the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.
I have very clear memories of September 11, 2001. I was at home with my 8-month-old daughter, in Minneapolis. My husband called...MPR didn't have the news yet, but CNN did. I'd been to New York City twice before, never been to the World Trade Center. But watching CNN from my basement in Minneapolis, it felt like someone had struck at my heart, and the heart of the country. I was shattered. And it took some time for my little world to get back to normal. It was too quiet, lending the world an air of waiting for something to happen. They'd grounded the flights that normally went over our house, and we'd occasionally hear a military plane. But life went on, and my world did get back to normal. Mostly.
That's my life, though. Many other people had their lives much more badly torn apart than I did. And not just those that lost friends and family to the attacks. I know people that changed radically after the attack, who I internally think of as "damaged", as it seems to have pulled them apart and not let them come back together the way they were before.
After the announcement of last night, I heard stories of crowds of people chanting "USA, USA" (something that would usually get me rolling my eyes) and people cheering that Osama bin Laden was dead. I have also heard people saying how horrible this is, to cheer for a death. Tasteless though some of the reactions may be, I'm certainly not going to miss him. And I am hoping beyond hope that this will enable some of the people damaged by the attack on 9/11 to pick up the healing process once again. And I am hoping that this will help our country to heal a little bit more of the great rift that was created after 9/11. To use the inevitable metaphor, a wound with a foreign object in it will not heal properly. If the obstruction is removed, there is hope that the wound will heal correctly and the body can be strong once again. Our country needs this and so do its people.
I consider myself to be a liberal (fiscal conservative/social liberal, really), and I frequently vote Democrat. I vote other things too, though rarely Republican. I am proud to live in the United States of America, though I am not always proud of the choices the people in charge make. I'm not religious, but agnostic. I'm not a pacifist -- I do believe that military intervention is sometimes called for. I think that "hate" generally damages the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.
I have very clear memories of September 11, 2001. I was at home with my 8-month-old daughter, in Minneapolis. My husband called...MPR didn't have the news yet, but CNN did. I'd been to New York City twice before, never been to the World Trade Center. But watching CNN from my basement in Minneapolis, it felt like someone had struck at my heart, and the heart of the country. I was shattered. And it took some time for my little world to get back to normal. It was too quiet, lending the world an air of waiting for something to happen. They'd grounded the flights that normally went over our house, and we'd occasionally hear a military plane. But life went on, and my world did get back to normal. Mostly.
That's my life, though. Many other people had their lives much more badly torn apart than I did. And not just those that lost friends and family to the attacks. I know people that changed radically after the attack, who I internally think of as "damaged", as it seems to have pulled them apart and not let them come back together the way they were before.
After the announcement of last night, I heard stories of crowds of people chanting "USA, USA" (something that would usually get me rolling my eyes) and people cheering that Osama bin Laden was dead. I have also heard people saying how horrible this is, to cheer for a death. Tasteless though some of the reactions may be, I'm certainly not going to miss him. And I am hoping beyond hope that this will enable some of the people damaged by the attack on 9/11 to pick up the healing process once again. And I am hoping that this will help our country to heal a little bit more of the great rift that was created after 9/11. To use the inevitable metaphor, a wound with a foreign object in it will not heal properly. If the obstruction is removed, there is hope that the wound will heal correctly and the body can be strong once again. Our country needs this and so do its people.