By: R A Monaco
May 5, 2011
In the wake of Bin Laden's death many of us here in the United States are uncertain how to act or reconcile our feelings. Do we celebrate a symbolic victory, anxiously fear ten years of extremist growth that has followed the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center bombing? Is "spiking the ball" really a matter of public safety?
I certainly don't blame Americans for rejoicing in the news of bin Laden's death, but I personally have difficulty celebrating the death of another human. Some of us here at home just find it difficult to find jubilation though our hope is that in the death of Bin Laden other's will get the "closure" needed to heel from their personal losses. Frankly, I think we let him off the hook and so too we may have given him the exact ending he would have wanted. Worse, we may have inspired others to follow his path to the “glorious” martyrdom that has often been a powerful inspiration for others.
Under false pretense, George W Bush mislead our country into invading Iraq, later invaded Afghanistan, politicians for their own ends have exploited the death of 9/11 while foreign and American soldiers as well as civilians in the thousands have been wounded or killed. It would seem that this loss is all for not if we as a Nation can better understand and at least learn more about why Americans are hated with such ire. Have our historical misuses of power and support of corrupt dictatorships turned the world against us? Has American imperialism and corporate avarice flamed the envies of foreign propagandist such that we should now expect the death of innocent people for reasons no other than being American?
Beyond how we must now reconcile the claimed willful blindness of Pakistan the real issue it would seem, is what can America learn and make different in the way our neighbors in rest of the world embrace us?
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