Public enemy number one has been killed. After more than 10 years of searching, an elite team of Navy Seals finally found and killed Osama Bin Laden.
In the wake of his death our country has been swept by both a feeling of immense relief and immense apprehension. What comes next? Was revenge finally achieved? How should we treat the death of our greatest enemy?
“I think its great for the American people,” David Watson, freshman education major, said. “A lot of people seem to be talking about it and I think we all feel relieved he is officially dead.
Many claim that the death of an enemy and terrorist who orchestrated the deaths of so many innocents over the years should be treated as a jubilant success.
“I am ecstatic that Osama bin Laden is dead,” Joe Stafford, senior history major, said. “He was a manipulative coward who caused so much pain to so many innocent families.”
On the other hand others hold that, while this does confirm a completed mission, that the no death should be reveled in.
“This strikes me similarly to the Martin Luther King quote, ‘hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.’ It’s never good to cheer or celebrate one’s death, even if he was this sort of evil figure,” Dr. Susan Pierson, assistant professor of education, said.
Even the president, in making his last minute speech announcing Bin Laden’s discovery and assassination, went through numerous speech rewrites and revisions just minutes before appearing before the entire world. He had to calculate a response, a way of expressing triumph without blatantly celebrating the death of a fellow human being.
“I think that most Americans legitimately feel that Osama bin Laden was a really violent and destructive person and I understand the national sense of relief that is experienced,” Dr. Thomas Stretton, assistant professor of education, said. “I find that all of the issues that relate to the destruction of people are tough to rejoice over, but I do understand why people, including myself, feel relief that this is history. That this force for harming other people has been silenced.”
As the United States sort out the host of emotions coming on the heels of this recent announcement many Americans are preparing for the potential repercussions of Bin Laden’s death.
“I’m relieved that we got him and that we succeeded but I know that this is not over in the least,” Pierson said. “We’re going on a trip to Swaziland, but in light of this event it’s really not completely safe for Americans to travel because of possible backlash.”
As the country, and our community, continues to collectively sort their thoughts and feelings post-Bin Laden, many will simply choose to remember not this death and its circumstances, but the people who are most affected by it.
“Ultimately, I think it offers closure to those victims of 9/11, that their ‘killer’, so to speak, was finally brought to justice,” Dr. Shelby Hockenberry, assistant professor of political science, said.
