We got Osama finally, huh? True fact, I keep accidentally saying Obama instead of Osama and vice versa. That’s kind of the worst copy-editing mistake you could ever make, ever. It’s not a Freudian slip though, I swear. Those two names are just easy as crap to confuse.
When I heard the news, (via text from Cnn) (we’re tight like that) I basically just went back to sleep.
But then, the next day, I started soaking in news sites and NPR like it was water for my soul. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know who was there, and how they found him and what phone numbers, exactly, were sewn into his clothes, and did he really use one of his wives a shield, and how did Pakistan really not know he was there? (Seriously, HOW?)
And really, selfishly, I wanted to see the death photo.
That makes me morbid doesn’t it?
I mean, you know, I genuinely believe he was killed. Obama put it best when he said something along the lines of “you’ll know he’s dead because you won’t see him anymore.”
But I still wanted to see the photo. I wanted to absorb the details of how it went down with my own eyes. I wanted to finalize everything.
I understand that it couldn’t be released though. I understand that it would do much, much more harm than good. And I’ve accepted that.
I think it all just goes back to the shock I felt on 9/11 and the way those feelings, which I thought were gone, all came rushing back Monday morning.
Those feelings that solidified for the first time for me that this world is a crazy place, and that you never, under any circumstances, can take the next minute of your life for granted. You can never take that next minute and file it away, confident that what you think will happen will actually happen, because the second you do, a plane flies into your meeting.
9/11 is when I went from naive American teenager, to world-aware.
When Osama became world-aware, he decided he hated everything about most of it.
When it happened for me though, I realized, for the first time, that each of us has to make a choice — are we going to make the world a better place, or not?
Imagine if everyone chose the former.
When i heard about Osama getting killed it was not something that made me want to celebrate in the street like i saw so many others doing on television. He was an evil man, and even in death i won’t celebrate evil. glad he’s gone, it’s the end to a chapter but not the story.