The End of a Boogeyman

Last night, President Obama made a remarkable late night announcement from the White House: Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks in New York and the boogeyman always lurking out there ever since, had been killed in a firefight with US special forces.

The details of this story will be hashed out over the coming days, including the somewhat controversial decision to bury bin Laden's body at sea. For me, the real story was the complex set of emotions which swept through me upon hearing the news. Like most Americans, September 11, 2001 was one which will forever stick in my memory. I know precisely where I was, who I was with, what my plans for the day were prior to them abruptly being only to sit glued to a television watching the events unfold. I remember the blind anger I felt that day, the horrifying abyss of shared terror and sadness as I watched first the people fall from the towers and then the towers themselves come down with everyone who was left still trapped inside.

I remember riding in the passenger seat of my little Geo Tracker as my mother drove me to get my driver's license reinstated (stupid speeding tickets) and upon hearing that the second plane had hit on the radio, pounding the dashboard of the tiny truck in rage. From there, it was years of knowing Osama bin Laden had escaped our grasp for his crime. The most powerful nation on the planet and he managed to give us a bloody nose and then elude capture and justice.

Until this weekend.

Thus, it wasn't surprising to me that spontaneous celebrations erupted among college students in DC around the White House, with similar reports elsewhere, such as Times Square in NYC. These kids are young, 18 years old or so and up. For them, bin Laden has dominated their youth and young adulthood. He was the boogeyman they came to fear when, at around age 8, they saw their parents stricken with grief and a nation mourning. They heard the news stories of the bad man who did it and how he was still out there. They watched as people on TV discussed possibly seeing bin Laden in the same conspiratorial and sometimes hyperbolic way people discuss seeing Bigfoot and other monsters. For these college kids, Osama bin Laden was a childhood terror now destroyed. Being 36 years old now, I can both sympathize with the psychological load off their minds and reflect on the nuance of what this actually means for the US and the rest of the world.

While I share some of their relief in seeing the man ended, I would have still preferred he be caught, tried, convicted, and locked in a cage for as long as we could keep him alive. Death was too good for him and I have no assurance of a hell existing for him to be punished in. Instead, I accept the actions of our servicemen and their Commander in Chief in bringing an end to a decade of bump in the night, fear-based politics, and closing a chapter too many people had opened in their lives one fateful September day.