Loss and Villainy

Today, students and I spoke only in passing about Osama bin Laden's elimination by U.S. secret forces. I say, "in passing" mostly because I myself am not sure how to feel, and I rarely like to enter a conversation with students without having at least an idea of how I'd like to frame my thoughts, opinions. I've been wondering about it all day. What's my problem? Shouldn't I be ecstatic? It was partly 9/11 that sparked my panic attacks starting at the end of September 2001. The guy who was the detonator of those attacks--those in NYC and those in my neural pathways--was dead, his DNA swiped and body unceremoniously dumped in the sea.

By what means can we communicate to our children that bin Laden deserved what he got, and yet convey the sense of sadness and bare necessity with which I hope his assassination was carried out. I'm not trying to sympathize with bin Laden. I mourned the loss of those 3,000 lives in September 11th, but to carry on a blood feud at staggering cost to the American taxpayer purse and psyche against simply the head (granted, the icon) of a nefarious terrorist organization seems like a bit of a false economy. There are over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians (though sources estimate this between 98,000 [Iraqi body count.org] and 1,033,000 [Opinion Business Research survey]), 8,800 Afghan civilians and over 7,211 dead American and coalition troops between the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. These figures combine to paint a very bloody picture of the cost of the bin Laden head hunting waged by America and her "coalition of the willing" over the last decade.

The throng of twenty-somethings chanting, singing, fingers jousting the air in jubilation in front of the White House last night brought something home to me--these kids are not so far removed from the ones I teach, so I wonder if my students react in a similar way to the news of Osama's assassination. The thought made me more than a little uneasy. There's no jubilation in the face of another's death, just like there is no joy in a televised or public execution. There may be relief, a kind of closure, sometimes just a finish, an end to waiting for the other shoe to drop. In bin Laden's case, the other shoe could've been another attack on U.S. interests here or abroad.

I hope the lesson, seen from afar, in the absence of explanation, isn't that revenge is okay. Instead, the lesson might be that doing the right thing isn't always possible. Sometimes your hand is forced to take odious actions like killing. It isn't pretty, we don't like to do it. It should always be avoided if possible, and you should always feel remorse for doing something bad. We must temper our joy at Osama's death--after all, it is just relief writ large, and not intended to inflame anyone's sensibilities. If I sigh because I am relieved, and along with it I exhale a nervous laugh, don't mistake it for elation or joy.