"We Got Bin Laden"

"We got Bin Laden," was proudly uttered across America, as the founder of Al Qaeda and the master mind of 9/11 was brutally murdered by the U.S. Navy Seals on May 2nd, 2011. The U.S. news media spoke of people fondly remembering where they were when this killing took place.

Despite the U.S. government suggesting this killing would break the backs of "the terrorists" I didn't believe it and found it sickening. It was just one more horrific death among many since 9/11 and rejoicing at murder spoke very poorly of us as a society.

9/11 (2001) cost nearly 3,000 people their lives and has since killed many more from diseases from the horrific debris emitted in the explosions of that day and from the immediate rescue attempts that followed.

Thousands of families have been devastated.

But the U.S. government reaction to 9/11 was to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, setting off violence that has cost hundreds of thousands of men, women and children their lives, severely injured many more and orphaned thousands of children. And the Afghanistan War continues today while Iraq is now barely functional, still wracked by endless violence.

And Iraqis live with limited electricity, unable to cool themselves or their children when temperatures hit 120 degrees, unable to consistently run computers, lighting, televisions, or receive clean drinking water or easy access to medical care.

How can we not recognize our own brethren in the Afghan and Iraqi peoples? How can so many Americans be indifferent to their suffering and even be indifferent to the suffering of the U.S. troops and their families?

So please forgive me for not rejoicing at the killing of Osama Bin Laden, whose death has done nothing to end all this violence and deprivation. The U.S.'s "War on Terror," to our shame shows how low the U.S. will stoop when it panics and that through the vast and continuing brutality, that we have all become terrorists.

Dick