DID BIN LADEN WIN?

  For ten years we have waged an unyielding war against the evil that would seek to eradicate our way of life. We have paid a high cost to avenge the tragic events of 9/11. I, like many other Americans, began to feel that our hunt for Osama Bin Laden had come at too high a cost. I felt, along with 70% of the country, that it was unlikely that we would find the Al-Qaeda leader, and that perhaps enough blood had been shed in our pursuit of him. May 1st 2011, President Obama delivered the news that so many of us felt would never come, "Justice had been done." I was instantly transported back to the events of 9/11. I thought of the watching the news that day and witnessing the planes as they struck World Trade Center towers, I thought of the images of a burning pentagon, and I thought about the ordinary people on flight 93 who fought the first battle in this costly war on terror. My mind filled with the images of people jumping to their deaths from the windows of the World Trade Center as the smoke and heat became unbearable inside the towers. I Thought of personal stories of that tragic day as well. Father Michael Judge, killed by falling debris while giving last rights to the dead, Todd Beemer, aboard flight 93 who told a group of heroic passengers, "Let's Roll", as they charged through the cockpit door and into history. I remember the towers coming down and the ash and dust covered New Yorkers who had seen a day like any other transformed in to a hell on Earth. I thought about that horrible day and the price we paid and I thought of the price we would pay for the next ten years. I thought of the thousands of lives we lost in the middle east and the hundreds of thousands of civilian lives lost as collateral damage in an undefinable war. I thought about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I thought about torture and morality. In that moment of hearing that "Justice had been done", I lived the last ten years all over again.
  This war has always been the most unconventional in American history, with no clear enemy and no real boundaries we have sought to secure the world from the specter of terror. In the process we sacrificed our principles as a nation and our place of honor among the rest of the world.  We sacrificed our rights and imposed our will upon other peoples in other nations. To many, in our relentless pursuit of the enemy we became the enemy.
   On September 11, 2001, we united in a way we never have before, and on May 1, 2011 we did so again, only this time it was bittersweet. I joined the rest of America in celebrating the death of a man whose evil deeds touched every life on the planet in one way or another. But in our celebration it is easy to forget what we have become. No longer are we the world leader who can claim the moral high ground. We have seen our nation begin to crumble from widening divisions brought about as a result of 9/11. While ultimately we ended Bin Laden's life, we also secured his legacy among those who would see us destroyed. Once we stood as a nation of noble ideals and as a shining beacon of freedom and hope. In a post Bin Laden world we have surrendered our noble ideals for vengence, sacrificed our freedoms for an unattainable security, and given ourselves over to bloodlust. Bin Laden may be dead but did he win after all? He will be martyred by his followers and we will be reviled among the middle east nations. He may be gone but his legions of followers will surely grow. How much more blood will we spill chasing the nameless, faceless, enemy? Most of all did Bin Laden win a personal victory over each one of us? He made us view an entire culture as suspect, he made us give in to fear, he made us embrace questionable military tactics and sell out our principles. He divided us deeply on questions of morality, religion, and human rights. He desensitized us to the carnage of war and made us celebrate death. In the end perhaps he did in fact destroy the American way of life. Maybe our principles died along with our innocence on September 11, 2001. For all those lives lost on 9/11 and every day since, I hope not.

IN HONOR OF THOSE WHO GAVE ALL! --Vaultboy