Osama

You know, I hate to be the kill-joy devil's advocate, but I can't say that happiness was the first emotion that ran through me when I heard about Osama bin Laden's death. In fact I'm a little weirded out by the smiles of joy pasted across many of my fellow American's faces.

Now look. I know this guy did terrible, atrocious, unspeakable acts of violence. I understand this. And no, I don't live in New York, and I luckily didn't know anyone who died on 9/11. So please excuse what could be construed as emotional and patriotic detachment. I also wish the best and safest for the Americans who are serving abroad right now. I am a safe blogger because you are doing the dangerous work. That is the truth, and my beef is higher up than you. There are no bullets whizzing by the men who make the real decisions. There are no mortar blasts killing their friends and keeping them awake at night, shooting into the darkness. So please come home well. Thank you, truly.

And yes, I am American. And I did feel the vulnerable and soul-crushing collapse of security and confidence as the World Trade Center buildings collapsed almost ten years ago. I saw the faces of New Yorkers on CNN, covered in ash and fear, scrambling away from rubble and rolling clouds of death. I've seen the footage of workers jumping from their windows, out of the frying pan and into the fire, so that death would at least be on their terms. That day will forever be burned into my memory, and I STILL can't watch a documentary about the purported struggle on United flight 93 because the emotions are too real and raw.

Was Osama bin Laden responsible for this? Yes. And to that effect, he should be held accountable. But where does joy enter into the equation? Where does happiness? His death, if anything, should bring about a somber measure of closure to this grueling war of attrition we have been fighting on "terror". A collective sigh of relief.

If nothing else, I felt sad when I heard the news. In the complex game that is American foreign policy, the best we could do ended up being eye-for-an-eye Pashtun justice, with the same narrow-minded dogmatism of our enemies. We have responded to death with death, and I don't see any joy in that. I see retribution. I see the cold and calculated final balancing of a spreadsheet.

And what has this cost us? Where do we go from here has a country? Have the billions upon billions of dollars footed by taxpayers that have funded this international manhunt been worth it? There's no way of knowing. But it's hard not to wonder what would have been if that money was used elsewhere. It's hard not to think what our federal deficit would be right now if we hadn't taken the bait and plunged our resources into the middle east.

And now as a country we stand waist deep in the Afghanistan quagmire, one arm in Iraq, another in Pakistan, and our credit card is reaching its limit. Its hard not to say that this manhunt for the white whale has bested us. That's why I'm sad.