Reflections on the Death of Osama Bin Laden

Often, our days and weeks are marked by a series of small rituals. Most every Sunday night I turn on CNN for a few minutes before shutting off the lights to go to sleep primarily to make sure that there are still 50 states in the union, that most of Europe still classifies themselves as allies of the U.S. and that the population of some unfortunate locale has not unexpectedly sharply decreased due to a horrific disaster. On Monday mornings I fire up my computer as soon as I wake up to check CNN.com largely to make sure that the market is not predicted to crash upon the ringing of the opening bell.

Nearly every Sunday and Monday these little rituals deliver uninteresting results. Of course, Sunday, May 1, 2011 was not a normal Sunday night. Rather than a desperate CNN program host trying to make a meaningful analysis of Paris Hilton’s latest stunt, America and the world was informed that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Not suspected to be dead, but dead. Indeed, this was not a typical Sunday night.

After making sure that I was hearing Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer correctly, I immediately surveyed how I felt and started to think about what this might mean.

Nine days later, my feelings about the killing of Osama Bin Laden are basically the same – almost an eerie lack of emotion. Sort of the same emotion as having a wart removed. Having the wart removed was not an option – it had to be removed before it spread further.

As perhaps you have guessed I was not shooting fireworks, or out in the streets shouting U-S-A…U-S-A. My thoughts immediately turned to the 9/11 families and our nation on that horrible day and to initial projections about what the death of Osama Bin Laden would actually mean after the fanfare died down. I am not a pacifist (by and large I tend to align with Just War theory), but celebrating the death of anyone seems quite barbaric to me. Killing Osama Bin Laden was the correct decision, just not a result that feels worthy of celebration to me. Reverence and reflection was and is more my state of mind.

I do not claim to know what his death will mean and I am highly suspect of anyone who claims to have conclusions. But, there is no doubt that his death is important. Some of the factors that seem important to me are:

• The cache of intelligence information we captured from the compound’s computers seems to be quite extensive. Only time will tell how meaningful or actionable the information will actually be.

• The United States fulfilled a promised and regained some strength on the world stage. We promised to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and we did it. Let’s face it, we are floundering a bit as a nation. The Iraq War was a fair disaster in my opinion and we have struggled for meaningful results in Afghanistan. I greatly admire and am thankful for our military and their families. No matter how much I have disagreed with these wars, I am always proud and thankful when I see a member of our armed forces in uniform. However, I do believe these conflicts were misguided and for many years mismanaged.

• Perhaps America now has a different picture of what military success can look like – what some wars of the future will look like. People that continue to support HUGE military spending on traditional types of weapons and systems are nuts. They are merely supporting the military industrial complex and wasting billions and trillions of dollars. We can blow up the world with our nuclear weapons dozens of times. More nuclear bombs to facilitate yet another occurrence of global annihilation is ridiculous. Kill him. Kill him dead….seems a bit redundant does it not? Yet, we continue to spend billions on our arsenal of 20th century weapons.

• Maybe America will redefine the definition of “ally” a bit. Pakistan is an “ally” of necessity, but are not our friend. We have known this for quite some time now. Perhaps our sometimes Kindergarten-style approaches to foreign policy in which we lay out all kinds of rules before a conversation can happen might be replaced by a more common sense approach. Almost a “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer type of approach.” An approach that recognizes that unfortunately we all aren’t going to be friends, but we all reside on the same giant sphere.

The only thing that is clear is that the death of Osama Bin Laden does not mark the end of anything. I suppose the world is safer without Osama Bin Laden, but not really. This event was prepared for and only time will tell how quickly Al-Qaeda will restructure and re-strengthen.

While we watch the pages of history unfold, we should be wildly thankful for our armed forces, the brave and highly skilled Navy Seals, our intelligence forces and our Commander-in-Chief whose orders should inspire us all to find the courage to make extraordinarily difficult decisions.