Like some people in the eastern time zone, I am watching right now pre-coverage of Barack Obamas mysterious ad-lib announcement "coming soon". Does anyone else miss the days when news happened- and wasn't leaked before it was supposed to be news? Seriously, I get tired of learning about things before I should learn about things. Maybe it's the part of me that likes to have things confirmed from legitimate sources.
By the time you read this, you will know that Osama bin Laden is dead. This is a historic moment- if you believe what the news people are telling you. Now, I'm not trying to minimize this event. I know we've spent ten years and countless dollars to find this guy, and I can't speak to how impactful this is to the people that lost loved ones on 9/11.
But it's also tiring watching CNN, waiting for the president to come on and give me this breaking news bulletin, and listening to Wolf Blitzer and some guy who I only know as John throw around all these superlatives about this event. And I don't get it- I just don't get it.
I know that bin Laden is the "face of international terrorism" (and if I didn't, I sure know it now, because they've only said it like 80 times). So this is probably a big deal. However, I also know that this prevailing hatred of America is not going to die with bin Laden. It's not going to go away. This is buried deep within a belief system, an ideology, and just because the figurehead of a terrorist organization is dead doesn't really mean much to me. This isn't going to stop terrorism- in fact, I imagine that it will probably have the opposite effect.
So I don't want to take away what this could mean to those who have waited these ten years to have some closure. I am just sitting here being tired of listening to these talking heads tell me what I should be believing or feeling about this momentous moment. We killed one guy- but unfortunately, we haven't killed the idea that he gave his life for. That's our real enemy.
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