Monday, May 2, 2011

Hooray For Death.

Everybody remembers 9/11.

It’s almost like a game. You sit down with friends or family on a quiet evening, have a couple of drinks (or not) and sooner or later you start playing “Where Were You On 9/11?” And everyone remembers where they were, what they were doing and who they were with when planes struck the World Trade Center.

Now (thankfully) we can play a new game: “Where Were You When bin Laden Died?”

I was sitting in my living room with my girlfriend. She was playing on her iPad2 ™ and I was digging around on the internet (not porn). We had Celebrity Apprentice on, mostly for background noise since neither of us enjoys the show. When the announcement came on I was ecstatic. I was restless. I kept standing and walking to the kitchen, then coming back to sit down again. I posted on Facebook. I kissed my girlfriend. Then I got back up and went back to the kitchen. I fixed myself a drink (rum and coke). Later I told my girlfriend that I had been tempted to run out into the street and shout the news at the top of my lungs.

This morning I prayed to God. Big Guns and I don’t discuss much the old-fashioned way, but I felt the need to make an exception. I asked him to forgive me for celebrating the death of another human being. I felt like it was worth doing, but to be honest the guilt I feel is pretty minimal. I felt more guilty about not feeling guilty than anything.

Today as the day progressed I was inundated with all sorts of reactions to the death of the World’s Most Wanted Man. Pictures and videos of people celebrating…




people remembering the fallen…





and so-forth.

You can Google the confusion. You can feel the confusion. So many people are happy about what happened. So many are sad. So many don’t know what to feel. So here’s what I can tell you kids:

Osama bin Laden was evil.



Look at him. Ugly hateful little bastard, wasn’t he? You can see it in his eyes, that creepy calm resolve that says, “I will kill you and anyone else who stands in my way.” Gives me the willies.

“Never underestimate the power of a man with a cause.” This man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Not just Americans or Christians. He killed plenty of Muslims too. People can debate what he believed, but one thing we all know to a certainty is that he had no compunctions about killing people. He wasn’t misguided. He wasn’t ill-informed. He knew what he was doing, and he reveled in it. If al Qaeda (his terrorist organization) did an operation that resulted in death, bin Laden wasn’t far behind in releasing a video glorifying what he’d done. The man was evil and we all knew it.

But that’s not why Ground Zero was flooded with joyous crowds. People weren’t celebrating the death of a man (even an evil one).



Okay, most people weren’t celebrating the death of a man.

People were celebrating the closure. People were celebrating the end of a reign of terror. Because Osama bin laden left a scar, not just on America but on the world. American, European, Afghani, Christian, Muslim, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters... not a soul felt true peace. The families of the 9/11 victims, the families of fallen soldiers couldn’t really find peace. For military and intelligence, it’s a fulfillment of a promise made and redemption for a day when we couldn’t protect the ones we loved most. People were celebrating the lifting of a weight from the shoulders of billions of free people.

I’m not a counselor. But I can tell you that it’s okay to celebrate May 1, 2011.




Too gratuitous? Ah, what the hell. Go big or go home, right?











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