Cynics, hide your heads.
Osama bin Laden is dead. It’s a headline Americans have been waiting to hear for nearly a decade since that September morning when al-Qaida wreaked sheer havoc on American soil.
Then, I was in seventh grade, sitting in math class unsure of what was going on. Not believing a kid who said planes had hit the Twin Towers. Later that day, it became more clear — watching the horrific images on TV, the smell of stale smoke in the air as I walked home from the bus stop, watching fighter jets fly over my house, just less than 40 miles from Ground Zero. It was all too real.
The deaths were all too real for people in my community and those around me.
Now, I sit as a college senior, well older, watching a display of patriotism unseen since the days after 9/11 unfold; people screaming “U-S-A,” a kid riding a bike with an American flag in hand, American music blasting out of car windows and bars.
But while most celebrate and enjoy this moment where the U.S. conquered a symbol of death and devastation, others try to kill the excitement. These cynics spout how this means nothing, wondering why people are celebrating when the war is not over and gas prices and the unemployment rate are still high.
Yes, we all know these facts. But it has been a while since the U.S. has done something this tangibly positive that we can all agree upon as good. It’s no longer the Cold War era of politics where there’s one bad guy. There always seems to be a gray area, an enemy undefined. Bin Laden was a throwback, a central figure of evil and symbol for extremism.
Americans are not as naïve as some analysts are making them out to be. I don’t think they have some preconception that now war is over, that we are inherently safe from any further violence. Last night was like the end of a movie where the bad guy is killed and the whole movie theater cheers because the good guys took him out.
Except this is real.
Bin Laden orchestrated the death of thousands of people, tore families apart. For those loved ones of the lost, this moment is one they have been awaiting for years. Bin Laden was the prototypical arch-villain. This was not a celebration of death, but instead catharsis.
Those cynics say students celebrating on college campuses are having “a frat party,” that we were too young to understand the scope of that day’s events. Again, they are judging what they don’t know. I may have just been a kid, but I will never forget the fear of that September morning, not knowing what was next.
I still don’t forget the different world we now live in because of that. My generation has grown up in a political world scoped by the word ‘terror.’ I’ve never known anything but strict security at the airport; I don’t bat an eye at getting a pat down.
And as kids who maybe couldn’t process the complex gravitas of the attack at its time, we came to know bin Laden as the perpetrator of evil, a murderer of innocent Americans.
So cynics, go hide your heads. We know there are plenty of other problems to tackle. The President of the United States knows that. No one thinks this is the end of adversity. But it is a victory. In sports, a regular-season win is still a win, even if it’s not a championship. If you don’t get enough of those wins that some call “meaningless,” well, you don’t get a shot at the ultimate payoff.
A line from Mark Twain says it well: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Bin Laden and his minions didn’t just wish death. They carried it out. Now Americans revel in his obituary’s being written. One evil in a world of many is dead: there’s nothing wrong with celebrating that.
Connor Kiesel is a senior studying journalism.
