Osama bin Laden

Well, my blog began with good intentions and promptly got pushed to the back burner when life caught up with me.  I have too many half-written pieces saved on my laptop that maybe someday I will finish and post.  So many events have motivated me to start writing but my thoughts on the death of Osama bin Laden have motivated me to finish writing.

I sometimes wonder how events throughout history would have been perceived had social media existed in the past.  What would facebook posters have said about actions taken during the Revolutionary War?  How would Twitter react to Allied behavior during WWI and WWII?  How would the world be different if society debated morality during and/or immediately following major occurrences?

Osama bin Laden's death sparked a variety of emotions in American and Western society.  Some people celebrated, gathering outside the White House and at ground zero, waving flags and chanting "USA!"  Others gathered to remember loved ones lost.  The vast majority of us took to facebook, twitter, and the blogs to share our reactions with our friends, family, and even strangers. Tweets expressed joy, sorrow, nationalism, somber reflection - any emotion you can name, it was on Twitter.

Living in England, I missed Obama's broadcast.  I woke up early in the morning to a cryptic facebook wallpost from a close friend: "Wishing I could see your face when you wake up and read the news...."  Rather than get out of bed, I used my blackberry to go to the CNN website and saw the headline "Osama bin Laden reported dead."  I jumped out of bed to simultaneously call my parents as I turned on the news.  When my mom answered my questions of "Is it true!?" with a positive affirmation, I sank onto our living room couch, shocked as I watched people cheering and chanting on my TV.  My mom pointed out that it felt wrong to celebrate death, even of someone as evil and destructive as bin Laden.


When our phone call ended, I didn't know how to feel.  A part of me wanted to cry from relief, despite having suffered no personal loss on 9/11.  A part of me wanted to be in those crowds, vocalizing pride in what our government and military had accomplished.  Then I felt ashamed for taking joy in the destruction of a human life.  When I went on facebook, I saw all that I had been thinking and feeling reflected back at me by friends and family.  Statuses of "USA! USA!" bordered statuses despairing at what American society had become.  Real and fake quotations began making the rounds.  Links to articles appeared, discussing everything from responses to Obama's speech to what the past 24 hours says about American society - our society.


Yet no one has vocalized what I've settled into.  I will not be on the streets, cheering and whistling - it's not who I am.  I still cover my eyes at the end of Nuremberg.  However, I will not begrudge or judge my fellow Americans who have reacted this way.  I strongly disagree with pundits and commentators who compare such actions to those who celebrated when 9/11 happened.  Americans are not joyous at the deaths of innocents.  Osama bin Laden was an evil man.  Whether you believe he was the mastermind behind 9/11 or not (a conversation for a different day), he still has the blood of innocent men, women, and children from all over the world on his hands.  Would you castigate the people who rejoiced at the news of Hitler's death?  Do you question their humanity?


That's my main problem with the discussion of society, humanity, and morality following bin Laden's death.  A friend of mine asked "How can we rejoice in the death of another?  Are we not human?"  My answer is yes, we absolutely are human and this is the perfect example of that humanity.  We are flawed; we possess complex emotions.  We don't always react in expected ways nor do we always express our emotions perfectly.  If you asked someone if they found joy in death, odds are they would vehemently reply to the negative.  And I would agree - death is tragic.  However, am I glad that Osama bin Laden is dead?  Absolutely.