It was my freshman year and I hadn't even been at school a week. I remember that morning like it was yesterday, time stood still as the nation was stunned to silence and tears. Now May 1, 2011 is another day I will not soon forget. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Old Town with friends, we hadn't been there twenty minutes before we heard the news and we immediately went to our phones to see how accurate it was; after all word spread like wildfire on Facebook and we all know how reliable that is. The first article we saw said "Unconfirmed", but as the night went on the details came out and the celebrating started. "Osama Bin Laden is dead!", walking down the street it was everywhere. Everyone wanted to make sure that the good news had spread. 'Good news', that phrase makes me smile a crooked smile.
It's good news for many and for those who found cause in it to celebrate part of me envies you, because I could not. I wish the death of one man made a difference to me, but it doesn't. In fact I wish all the "good" we've done with this war mattered to me, but it doesn't. I realize how unpopular my opinion is and I don't mean to offend anyone! I am grateful to the soldiers who were willing to go and to the families who clenched their fists and held their breath awaiting their return. I can never thank you enough for the sacrifice that you made! But one man's death doesn't change what happened that day or the days and months and years that followed. We invaded a nation where we couldn't tell the difference between the guilty and the innocent because they invaded us and didn't care if there was a difference. I was devastated that day, I pleaded with God to wake me from the nightmare and I wasn't even there. My heart broke with those of people I would never meet and I mourned the loss of those I would never know.
In the days that followed I realized that the nation I foolishly believed was somehow above such an atrocity, wasn't, and war had been brought to us. It was at our front door demanding our attention and we dared not look the other way. I understood our need to respond and I understand the need for justice. In the months or years it took to plan the attack our enemy recruited thousands of unknowing Americans to be the first casualties of a war we never saw coming. I burned with hatred at the evil man is capable of, and I burned with anger at its effectiveness, but I did not want the war!
There's a reason God says that vengeance is His (Romans 12:19), He doesn't want us fighting either. I wish we would have listened. Both sides have lost thousands, soldiers come home with PTSD, missing limbs, nightmares, and in caskets. Children have lost their fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles, their siblings. We've spent billions dollars, and for what? Bin Laden was a monster preying on the innocent, but how many of those in the Middle East say the same about us? How many would say that we are worse? How many are celebrating his death as a martyr while we celebrate those who took his life? This war stopped being about justice a long time ago, now it's about which side blinks first. Sometimes I wonder what things would look like today had we done nothing. If we had mourned our loss, rallied to rebuild, but had not chosen to fight back. It is so much more difficult to refuse a war or stop one then it is to start one. Was the initial bloodshed not more than enough?!
Sometimes I wonder if I would feel differently had I been there. I wonder if vengeance would've been at the top of my list instead of healing had I lost someone that day. I was lucky, all the people I knew in New York were terrified, but safe. I wonder if I had been on one of the planes if in the moments before it was over I would be hoping my country would avenge my death. I can't honestly answer any of the questions I have asked myself over the last ten years about that day. Every answer I would give is tainted by the events that have happened and by what I believe. Every answer I would give is only what I would hope to be the truth, and even at that it's safe to say most wouldn't like it.
My heart aches for the families who have lost loved ones, for the city that will never be the same, and the nation that realized the hard way it is not invincible. But my heart also aches for those who's hatred burned so red hot that they believed this act of violence was the only way to quench it. I ache for those who carried this out in the name of God and will enter eternity only to realize they had no idea who He was or what He wanted for them.
A decade passed and we finally killed the man, but killing the man doesn't mean we killed the enemy. Killing the man doesn't mean we killed the evil.
God said vengeance was His. Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind." I know why we didn't listen and maybe ten years ago I believed war was necessary, but I was wrong. I wish we would have listened.
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