Monday, May 2, 2011

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

I am watching Celebrity Apprentice (Yes, this is what unemployment has reduced me to.  Thankfully over in a few weeks).  Right as The Donald is about to disclose the booted contestant, a scrolling text starts at the bottom and I think "What now?"  We are in the middle of spring Rainfest 2011 here in Greater Cincinnati, the Ohio is flooding its banks and random tornadoes are at their height.  What I see instead makes me sit up and punch the volume way up and stop paying attention to the boardroom.

The scroll says Osama bin Laden is dead.


Wha??  Suddenly The Donald and his atrocious comb-over no longer holds my mocking attention.

I watch in fascination as the reports come in.  In their wake is a kind of sadness at the extreme and, to me, unnecessary loss of human life on both sides of this conflict over the last 10 years.  I see people dancing and celebrating the death of this man and I am shaken.

Please don't misunderstand me.  OBL was a tyrant......in his day.  But his power web was broken a long time ago.  I am not sorry he is gone from the planet.  He needed to go.  I understand that for most of the US he has become THE symbol of terrorism.  Some people even believing that if we chop off the head of the snake that is terrorism, that the rest will die.  Personally I think we could all learn from Hercules and the hydra here.  New and more brutal tyrants will come.  It is the way of things in this world.

My reaction is not to OBL's death.  He is a wicked man.  It is to the reaction to that news that I am seeing.  That celebration will be fodder for Al Jazeera and will incite the re-birth of the very thing they celebrate removing tonight and the cycle will begin again.  A cycle of hate.  A cycle that includes no attempt to understand another's point of view.

I am not an eye-for-an-eye person.  I'm not exactly a turn the other cheek either, just ask my family.  I just don't see how a mother left to grieve the loss of her child in Afghanistan will make a mother in the USA feel one whit better about the grief of losing her own child.  To me, both losses are unacceptable.

Part of me simply wishes that the reaction to the news of OBL's death had been less Girls Gone Wild and more Act Like You Been There.

Today I will remember those who lost their life on both sides of this unholy war and I will pray for peace.

3 comments:

  1. Beautifully written with beautiful understanding. I spent much of the weekend grieving for Moammar Gaddafi's loss of a son and three grandchildren. Though he has murdered and tortured many, yet I know he is feeling pain now. May the pain and killing lead to the shift that leads to peace.

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  2. I share your sentiments, a friend of mine posted the following on his Facebook status that is very fitting

    "Remember how during passover, we spilled a drop of grape juice on the plate for every plague on the egyptians because we take no pleasure even in the suffering of oppressors and murderers."

    RJRdaydreamer

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  3. I like that there has been much discussion about this.

    "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." MLK

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