Osama Is Dead

Osama bin Laden has been killed, ten years after 9/11, eight years to the day of President Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" speech. People all across America actually took to the streets to celebrate, and I watched President Obama's address on Youtube mere hours after it was recorded.

Obviously, there will be many differing feelings and thoughts about something so political and while usually I use this blog to talk about my experiences abroad, I just want to talk a little about how this one event changed all of our lives.

I was seven, I think, when 9/11 happened. I don't remember if I saw it live or if I missed it at school, but I remember staring at the screen of the TV, black smoke billowing out in towers itself, and not understanding that it was real, because who would do something so awful?

I was also turning seventeen in Barcelona, Spain, recently, and noticing all the anti-Spain/pro-Catalonia graffiti, or the inverse and wondering how people could hate each other just because of a language, a culture, why Belgium is trying to split because they can't deal with French/Flemish anymore. From there, my mind wandered (as it often does; it's too young to be left alone) to how people hate differing things: sexuality, religions, creeds, races, countries... And how the strongest example of hate I've ever seen happened when I was merely seven years old when the Towers fell and nearly 3 000 innocent Americans died.

Countless of innocent lives have been wasted since then, on both sides of the war. There's never any easy answers in terms of who is right and who is wrong. It would be easy to say that this is, clear cut, a triumph, the end of this epic, our Voldemort is dead, let's have the epilogue with the horribly-named children now, please. But it's not that simple.

We've cut off the head of this proverbial snake. But it's not a real snake; other heads, other limbs, other snakes can easily take over. I certainly hope, with all my heart, that this symbol of "justice being done" helps the pyramid collapse and shatter.

But that's probably not what will happen. Americans and Canadians overseas in Afghanistan and the soldiers in Iraq might be under a bit of hellfire now, more than usual, a revenge strike from all the other heads and snakes still in that area of the world.

I just want the world to know that even tho this is a war many don't believe in anymore, even tho it has been expensive, monetarily and in terms of precious lives, even tho everyone wants our troops to come home, that we triumphed just a little bit. That when a prince gets married, the bad guy dies. That sometimes the good guys have to wait a hell of a long time to win.