Celebrate This: Coming to Terms Over The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

It’s been over one week since we learned that Osama Bin Laden was killed by the US Navy’s mythical Seal Team Six while conducting Operation Neptune Spear halfway around the world. It is only now that I can begin to put into words the thoughts and emotions flung into motion on the first day of May, 2011.

In the hours and days that followed, celebrations, planned and unplanned broke out. All forms of media were energized by the dramatic death of the most notorious man of our time.

News commentators and pundits of all types repeatedly made the amusing gaffe of transposing “Obama and Osama” in their sheer excitement to proclaim the “good news.” As I listened to this, I chuckled and thought, why don’t we just call him Bin Laden? This way we can avoid sounding like Ted Kennedy.

I initially felt a bit uneasy about celebrations even though I was privately roiling , “Yeah, WE got the #*&%$....!”

It’s curious that I think of getting Bin Laden in terms of “WE” when I am anything but a Navy Seal. But, I will get to that later.

While driving to work the next day and listening to a favorite rock station, the host is taking a break from music and making hay over Bin Laden’s death. He is taking calls from listeners, letting them share their thoughts. One woman called and expressed her dismay over people celebrating the death of “another human being,” at which time the host calls her every name in the book. The host advocates raucous celebration over the death of this “piece of *&%$.” His words not mine.  

Well, this woman sounded like a fool to me, an unrealistic guppy, a relativist whose self-contradictory ideology could never deliver her to any decision between right or wrong. Nevertheless, the host sounded even more foolish, a crass barbarian devoid of ethical and universal considerations.  

Being a pro-military conservative catholic who believes in the right of self-defense at the personal level (and by extension, the collective national level,) this issue of celebratory action left me stymied at first.

At the core of my belief in self-defense is the sanctity of human life. Yet, Bin Laden was human. Albeit, we could argue over degrees of humanness and where he ranked; he was a human being. It is my understanding the DNA results revealed this conclusively.  

Would an omission be just as culpatory as an act?.

Something within tells us yes.

Is it right to permit the taking of innocent lives? Should we stand by and permit it?

Something within tells us no.

If we are to intervene, what then? How do we uphold the sanctity of human life if we, at times, must take human life in order to save human lives; this paradox is at the core of our wounded existence.

But, the sanctity of human life is also placed within the context of our actual existence.

It is not just placed in the ideal existence because that is not where we find ourselves at present. We are placed in an existence imperfected, lacking wholeness, deprived of true justice. Yet something within us struggles to make sense of it, something wishes to rise and be risen.

We seek the ideal but we must come to terms with the fact that we live in the actual.    

I felt relieved that Bin Laden was removed from our company, presumably by his own actions.

I was relieved because his death ended yet another chapter in this long battle between good and evil. Unfortunately, it’s a story that will continue until the end of time. This is the actual existence we must face.

I can understand why some people want to rejoice over his death. However, killing another human being, while most certainly justified at particular times, is something we should see as somber, never something to rejoice over. At best, something to be seen as a sad, but necessary, condition of the human state.

In this particular circumstance, it is necessary and serves the common good.

Coming from a background where I was trained in the application of lethal force, there exists an absolutely required and pronounced degree of deliberateness coupled with a spirited (dare I say passionate) mindset in doing the work that requires this heavy responsibility.

Anything less, and one will come up short. Who can afford to come in second in a contest where death is a possible outcome? Not me.

Anyone cavalier with this necessary fact is a fool and has no value for human life (Their own and those around them.) They end up de-sanctifying human life through personal or collective sloth.

Those trained for this level of confrontation must come to grips with this, a place where the ideal and actual collide. This “emotional element” cannot be omitted if one is to survive;

it is the necessary heat.

To those unfamiliar with occupations that demand this responsibility, often, this level of focused deliberation is confused with bloodlust. That is understandable but speaks to how disconnected we are at times.

Still, some who rejoice for the sake of Bin Laden’s death may be missing the point. I hold no contempt for them in a general sense (Although, I am sure there are those among them who do celebrate as a kind of bloodlust.)

I suspect that many who celebrate are exhibiting the passions necessary for self-preservation absent the reason. Collectively we are unified in this way. I am sure this is what I felt when “WE” got him.

  

Emotions are a very powerful aspect of our existence; and, we should not fail to acknowledge them while simultaneously checking them with reason.

Just because the world is a better place because Bin Laden has been killed does not make us better for having killed him. It only brings our struggle into focus, defining it in a kind of specific relief.

This does not necessarily make us guilty; it just illustrates our incompleteness and our desire to rise from it. Bin Laden’s death, while he was a human being, is incidental to the larger prize we seek, the preservation of the good, motivated by love.

This is what we should be celebrating, not the death of a terrorist.  
  

We can only pray for guidance and act with love for human life in the context of our actual existence, to stay with our faith, to battle evil with integrity of heart, and to give thanks that we have within us this guided capacity.

I believe we have prevailed well in this regard.

In the end, we should consider his death a sobering reminder of what we face and the sacrifice we must make to preserve what is good.

And that will never be an easy thing to do.