Osama bin Laden's Death

With the recent news of the attack on a compound in Pakistan and the subsequent death of terror-lord Osama bin Laden, there is much to think back on over the last ten years.  I know everyone over the age of probably 13 or 14 remembers where they were and what they were doing when bin Laden's master plan came to fruition.  Oh how that day changed us as a country forever and mostly for the worse.

At the outset, as President Obama mentioned in his speech last night, we came together like never before.  Republican, Democrat, Yankee, Southerner, whatever race, it didn't matter.  We all cried.  We were all emotionally destroyed.  We were all New Yorkers.  We were all American.

The whole world was American.

We soon realized that bin Laden and Al-Qaida were behind the attack and the whole world came together to attempt to bring these extremists to justice.  And that's where the warm-fuzzy feelings start to go away.  Instead of asking for sacrifice from Americans, then-president Bush told us to spend.  He could
have asked for anything; higher taxes to pay for the rebuilding and subsequent war, volunteers for the armed forces, a resolve to not let this change our way of life, but instead he simply told us to shop.  A request that some argue has lead to our current economic climate.

Instead of using the good will of the world to help us in our struggle with Al-Qaida, we scoffed at it and elected to start another war we couldn't afford and had no business fighting.  The world walked away from us.  Even worse is that those throughout our country who thought the Iraq war was not warranted, who didn't want to start the first ever unprovoked war, were vilified by the Right as un-American, un-patriotic, unsupportive of our troops; a practice which continues today.

In the years that have followed the attacks in New York and Washington, DC we have seen our standing in the world tumble.  We have seen some essential freedoms eroded away in the name of security.  We have compromised our principles as a nation and tortured detainees.  We have seen over 6,000 troops die and, according to the first website I looked at, almost 900,000 civilians.

This all in the name of security, more properly named revenge.  Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  If we had simply sacrificed our hatred in 2001, stood up, brushed ourselves off and went about our lives, we would have won.  Instead, the man whose death many around the world are celebrating today accomplished his mission.