***Note - I wrote this post in May of 2011 but never published it. I have been going through old writings and decided to publish this one because it is relevant to the current political atmosphere. Sadly, the answer to the title of my post is still definitely "No," but I do have hope for the future.
On May 1, 2011, President Obama announced that a targeted operation led by CIA and US Special Forces on a compound in Pakistan resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. As would have been expected, celebrations broke out across New York City, and the media (mainstream and social) was flooded with excited comments and reports. I was actually asleep when the news was announced, and didn't find out about it until my husband read the news on Facebook at 9am the next morning. We immediately turned on the TV to watch the news coverage after we heard, though.
I was initially very unsure of how to feel at this news. The most immediate reaction I had was one of relief. Finally. Maybe this news will turn the tide on the debates on ending the war in Afghanistan. My next reaction was skepticism. I watched a simulation of the raid that played on MSNBC. It sounded great, but I still kept thinking the news might be too good to be true – that is, until I saw Dick Cheney’s statement. His body language – the way he cocked his head to the side, shifted his eyes, and spoke out of the side of his mouth – quashed any doubts I had that this news was legit. I could see how much he loathed having to give the Obama administration credit by the defeated little smirk on his face the way he grit his teeth when he said it.
Once I had absorbed that this news was really looking like it was the truth, I took to Facebook to see my friends’ reactions. I couldn't help but feel unsettled about the idea of celebrating the targeted assassination of someone, even Osama bin Laden. While I was certainly glad this hunt had come to an end, I just can’t get happy about someone being executed, because I can’t help but think about what they've done that has caused them to deserve execution.
Predictably, the major news outlets were reviving stories of loved ones lost in 9/11 and the struggles of those who sought to help others during those terrifying times. Unpredictably, these stories actually got me thinking, and caused me to reflect on the almost decade that had elapsed since life as I knew it changed. I looked at my calendar, and saw that I had an appointment with the caterer to do a tasting for the food I am going to have at my 10 year high school reunion, which I am in charge of planning. A flood of thoughts went through my head, and I burst into tears, even though I really don’t like crying.
I was in my third week of college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on September 11, 2001. I have never felt so alone at any point in my life than in the few days after the attacks. I didn't know a soul before classes started, I was a good four and a half hour drive from home, and I didn't have a car. As much as I try not to think of myself in such clichéd terms, I really will never forget when I heard about the news about 9/11, it literally changed my world as I knew it. I was 18 years old, and there hadn't been a major foreign attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, and even that was really far away in Hawaii – this type of shit just didn't happen anymore, I thought, not in the US at least.
It happened on a Tuesday – I remember because my roommate had to take an 8am Tuesday-Thursday English class first semester. We had hit it off pretty well – she was really country and kind of a psycho girlfriend, but she was a lot of fun. Anyway, I woke up to the sound of the TV and looked at the clock. When I saw that it wasn't even 9am, I first wondered why Meg wasn't in class, and then I became really annoyed that she had turned on the TV so early – I mean, it was my TV on my dresser! Once I opened my eyes and focused on the TV, however, I was jolted awake. She had the channel turned to CNN, which was displaying a feed of the Twin Towers in New York City billowing smoke. We quickly learned that witnesses reported seeing an airplane fly into each of the towers, and a video was soon being aired of the second tower being hit that had been taped by a nearby tourist. Meg and I decided we needed to wake up our suitemates, so we walked through the adjoining bathrooms and woke them up, telling them to turn on the TV.
When they turned on the TV in their room, I freaked out, and yelled, “When we walked in here to show you this news, there were TWO towers on that screen!” The frantic reports told us one of the towers had just collapsed. One of the tallest buildings in New York, on a work day, had COLLAPSED. We sat glued to the TV in my room (it was a kick-ass 19 inch TV/VCR combo, with a DVD player attached), and soon watched the second tower fall. We barely knew each other, and yet we all knew we were experiencing one of the pivotal moments of all of our lives.
UNC did not cancel classes that day. The only class I had on Tuesdays that semester was a French class at 1pm. I arrived at class (there was an attendance policy, after all), completely ill at ease with the day’s events. My professor showed up right at 1pm, in tears. She said she couldn't believe that the university had not cancelled classes and sent us all home. The next 24 hours were surreal. There had been construction all over campus that was humming every day since classes had started, but everything became silent that day. Chapel Hill wasn't that far from the RDU airport, and had a local airport nearby, so we were used to constant noise from air traffic, but all flights had been grounded. There was an eerie quiet everywhere, the effect of which was certainly amplified by my lack of friends or family nearby. I filled that quiet with chatter from CNN.
On Wednesday, my roommate Meg’s mom drove to Chapel Hill from Lexington, NC (about 1 ½ to 2 hours away) and took us out to dinner. We craved a sense of normalcy, so we opted for crappy food at the Rat (the Ramshead Rathskeller is a local institution). The cavernous atmosphere, complete with years of graffiti scribbled anywhere past students had been able to find, was somehow appropriate and comforting. I didn't have any idea what “skirt steak” was (and I have always eaten a lot of steak), but it was the signature dish and it felt good to order. We finished eating dinner, my initial suspicions of the quality of skirt steak confirmed, and Meg’s mom walked us back to our dorm room.
That is the point where my specific memories of the events of 9/11 end. It was, after all 10 years ago. 10 YEARS AGO! 9/11 happened a few months after I graduated from high school, at a time when I had been ready to conquer the world. I remember being a generally happy person prior to this period of time. After 9/11, though, it was one war, then another war, with plenty of fear thrown in, but no real closure to the situation. Osama bin Laden was being hunted by the largest military in the world. It shouldn't take long at all to find him, politicians reasoned. Time just kept going on, and after a while, bin Laden was no longer the boogeyman, that was Saddam. Even as the situations with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became much more complicated than initially promised by the Bush Administration, I really thought they were going to find him sometime in the near future. 9/11 happened a few months after I graduated high school – Osama bin Laden, Undesirable Number 1 himself, was tracked down as I am counting down the days to my 10 year high school reunion in June. My 10 year reunion!
The political landscape post 9/11 was initially united. The normal reaction is to trust in our government at the time of crisis, especially when we are being constantly assured they are taking care of things. Even a year and a half later, in March of 2003, 90% of Americans agreed with the choices made by the Bush Administration regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. I was one of those 10% that was against the war in Iraq at the time, and it felt lonely at first. As the war in Iraq dragged on beyond the promised “6 days, 6 weeks, I doubt 6 months,” many people began to lose support for the war. The middle of the Bush years saw a rapid polarization of the political atmosphere, which continued largely through the present, being amplified by the Tea Party movement.
Before I knew what was happening, I started crying when I thought of how much Osama bin Laden’s actions cost our country. I only get sadder when I think how many of the changes in our society came about because we let ourselves be overrun by fear. The terrorists really did win, because they achieved what they set out to do – to change our way of life – and they played us into doing most of the work ourselves. Not to mention it took almost a decade to track down a man on dialysis! Even though those thoughts really brought me down, I was able to quickly return to hope.
I hope that the killing of Osama bin Laden is the turning point we need to get overwhelming public support (and get enough political support to make shit happen) for declaring victory in the war on Terror and ending combat operations in the Middle East. Take any moral argument whatsoever out of the analysis of the wars in the Middle East, and there is no justification, since the wars are largely responsible for the sustained budget deficits. Even if you believed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the right thing to do at the time, it is time to bring an end to this decade long state of warfare that our nation has endured. We need to stop allowing the deaths of our men and women in uniform, and innocent civilians, and let the people of these countries do what we claimed we wanted them to do from the outset – allow them to rule themselves with their own form of government. Our economy is still in crisis mode, and we will not solve our budget problems without ending our involvement in the Middle East.
I have always liked President Obama, even though he wasn't in my top 5 choices during the 2008 primary season. I haven’t agreed with every choice Obama has made as President, but overall I think he has done a good job, especially in light of the political climate he has endured. I do think he has caved in way too much to purely political Republican demands and allowed them to water down important legislation, despite a large Democratic majority holding all of Congress and the White House. I have hated politics since Obama took office, however, since it has consisted of one attempt after another to invalidate Obama’s right to holding the Oval Office. They can’t beat him on the issues, since contrary to the conventional wisdom of some, years of pet Republican spending habits have become unjustifiable in light of the current budget debates. Instead, they are trying to prove he shouldn't be president at all – he’s not an American citizen, he wasn't born in Hawaii, he is a Muslim, he wasn't really a good student even though he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law. The Republicans have been making ridiculous claims for the past several years, but they are treated by portions of the media as if completely legitimate. Obama’s series of choices in his actions over the past week or so made this small but vocal opposition to Obama look really stupid.
I hate to take pleasure out of people making fools of themselves, but I love to think that when Obama released his long-form birth certificate a few days ago with no warning or ceremony, he knew that the operation that could lead to the death of bin Laden would be going down in a matter of days. I just love how calm his demeanor was, scolding the press for wasting time on foolishness, and watching the inevitable shouts asking why he waited so long to release his birth certificate, when he knew they would be getting a definitive answer on what he'd been spending his time in just a few days through a dramatic address to the nation. He then delivered some amazing jokes directed towards his potential 2012 contenders at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, but managed to not give away that he’s been too busy to worry about the ridiculous birther claims (which he thought would just die out) because for months he had been planning an operation to take out bin Laden. So much for all of that talk about Obama being “soft on terror.” He did not instruct the army to just bomb the area to oblivion, he had special forces storm bin Laden’s hideout in a targeted operation. That sounds pretty bad-ass to me, like something straight out of an action movie, not to mention well-planned and thought out. I have always found Obama very thoughtful, which I really like, and this characteristic was clearly exhibited in the way he carried out this operation.
I hope that we are able to take bin Laden’s death as the ending point of an era defined by terror and fear. The billionaire financier of Al Qaeda is dead, killed up close and personal by some of the best soldiers the US has to offer. As citizens, we must shift our focus to identifying rational solutions to our out of control budget situation. Ideologues don’t solve problems involving numbers, so we need to stop putting them in charge of our budget negotiations. Just as the news of bin Laden’s death has made me reflect on the events of the past decade, we should also remember the political agendas of the past that drove excessive and wasteful spending, and refuse to allow those patterns to be repeated. For too long, we have allowed the politicians to drive legislation, who are only concerned with what is best for them – we have to start demanding that legislation be driven by what is best for the American people. We kind of lost our voice after 9/11 – it’s way past time for us to get that voice back.
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