Because of the SEALs and President Obama and his shift in defense and security strategies after he took office, Osama bin Laden is dead and buried. 

I was living in LA on 9/11.  I awoke early that morning to Bob Edwards on NPR saying something about a plane crashing into a building in New York.  I ran to the front room and turned on the television.  I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center.  I’m a child of the 60s who came of age in the 70s.  I missed the Vietnam draft by one year, my number was 133.  Now my country was being attacked.  I felt nothing until I saw people jumping out of the skyscrapers, falling to the ground like birds with clipped wings.  My strongest memories are my conversations with loved ones on the phone.  I heard the shell-shock in their voices as I imagine they heard in mine.  And I remember how the air in LA cleared with LAX closed, liquid blue paint brushed across the sky.     

As the weeks and months passed and finally the years, I became hardened against my emotional reaction to 9/11 because of the opportunity President Bush ignored - a chance to unite our nation and the world.  Instead he pursued his Iraq war which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or bin Laden and everything to do with finishing the job his father couldn’t finish.  History is filled with family feuds gone awry. Chalk another one up.

I’m happy bin Laden is dead.  Perhaps now our country can come out of its slump, especially for the generations who were raised 10 years before, during, and 10 years after 9/11.  I cried when I saw the students at Ground Zero and at the White House celebrating on the night bin Laden was killed. I cannot imagine being 10 years old right now, or 20 years old.  The history these generations have grown up with has been all about 9/11.  Don’t listen to the pundits, my young friends, there is nothing wrong with celebrating death, or success on the battlefront, that’s what war is all about. And this is your country. Now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 at 11:01 pm and is filed under David's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.