Last night as my husband and I were being amused by watching "The Apprentice" where Star Jones and NeNe were going at it, then a news flash ran across our T.V. screen indicated that the President was about to announce some big news in relations to our "national security". I must admit part of me was very nervous because the news could have gone either way, given the state of our world today.
My husband turns to me and says, its one of two things "Bin Laden" is no more or we are either about to be attacked or we foiled a huge attack. Fair enough, I had to agree. We waited roughly an hour for the President to go on the air to deliver his news, meanwhile, the media was already getting bits and pieces of the story and sharing it. It was rather anti-climatic and really wish the news would have been shared by the President first before being dissected by the media. I'm not even sure why we stayed up to listen to the President's speech since the media unfolded the news minutes before.
The whole story is a bit "anti-climatic" to me. Its been 9 years and 7 months since that horrible day and we finally managed to "eliminate" our enemy - the man who masterminded attacks of grand proportion that stripped the United States of its "freedom". Sure, we still have freedom in the sense that we are not ruled by dictatorial rule - but I don't know about you, but I feel my life changed on September 11, 2001 and I feel some of the "freedoms" we had, not to mention "security", were stripped from us on that day. I don't walk into an airport without having to strip off shoes, belts, watches and to have a complete body scan where someone on the other side of the monitor is viewing parts of me very few people have ever seen. I have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to purchase a bottle of water after walking through security because you can't bring such things with you through security. I miss the days where my family can walk me to the gate and give me a hug and kiss goodbye as I enter the plane and wave to me from the terminal as I wave back at them from my window seat. I find I size up every single person that enters the plane I'm flying on.
Its hard to celebrate this news for many reasons. Bin Laden and friends have had 9+ years to institute new attacks, attacks that we might not even see unfold for years to come, but he had the chance to communicate and gather people to his cause. I don't feel any safer today than I did on September 11, 2001. Thousands of people lost their lives because of him and his followers between September 11, 2001 and today. We lost men and women in our military fighting to combat him. We went into a war with a country that wasn't even connected to Bin Laden and killed many innocent women, children and men - not to mention losing lives of our own people while in combat. All the while, this man was still alive and kicking.
Life would have been so much better had we used our military and covert intelligence to eliminate Osama Bin Laden on September 10, 2001. That would have been worthy of celebration!
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