Lafayette Park
2011-05-03 - by
Osama’s dead and let’s hope Al Qaeda passes with him (or at least falls apart without him) but there’s one bit of grit in the gears that says maybe we paid a price for his villainy we hadn’t reckoned on.
It’s the celebrating.
The way we – especially our young people – seem to be celebrating Osama’s death.
The other night I turned on the TV and there was a mob of students in Lafayette park (across from the White House) whooping and hollering and laughing – like students partying in Chapel Hill after Carolina wins the Final Four – because we killed Osama.
And it’s not just young people: A right much older person in Charlotte told the Observer instead of burying Osama at sea we should have strung his body up in public then defiled it the way the Italian partisans defiled Mussolini’s body in 1945.
Osama bin Laden sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. I can see him celebrating an enemy’s death. But without quite realizing it we may have proved (with our celebrating from the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream Waters) that in destroying him we have become infected with a bit of his germ of just plain meanness.
War is hell and there’s no sparing the innocent or, it seems, coming out of one with clean hands yourself.
President Obama said all that needed to be said: Justice has been done. That was enough.
Lafayette Park
2011-05-03/
Osama’s dead and let’s hope Al Qaeda passes with him (or at least falls apart without him) but there’s one bit of grit in the gears that says maybe we paid a price for his villainy we hadn’t reckoned on.
It’s the celebrating.
The way we – especially our young people – seem to be celebrating Osama’s death.
The other night I turned on the TV and there was a mob of students in Lafayette park (across from the White House) whooping and hollering and laughing – like students partying in Chapel Hill after Carolina wins the Final Four – because we killed Osama.
And it’s not just young people: A right much older person in Charlotte told the Observer instead of burying Osama at sea we should have strung his body up in public then defiled it the way the Italian partisans defiled Mussolini’s body in 1945.
Osama bin Laden sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. I can see him celebrating an enemy’s death. But without quite realizing it we may have proved (with our celebrating from the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream Waters) that in destroying him we have become infected with a bit of his germ of just plain meanness.
War is hell and there’s no sparing the innocent or, it seems, coming out of one with clean hands yourself.
President Obama said all that needed to be said: Justice has been done. That was enough.