On The Killing of Osama bin Laden

This past week, I’ve found myself uneasily watching and listening for news of the responses around our country, and the world, to Osama bin Laden’s death. The images of people celebrating and dancing, hailing “victory” and “U.S.A., U.S.A.” frankly just make me uncomfortable. 

I was living in New York City at the time of the terrorist attacks of 2001 and remember feeling strangely out of sync with the rest of the country’s response; military retaliation at that time felt like the wrong decision. So, too, now jubilation at bin Laden’s death feels wrong as well.

At the same time, I cannot say that I can imagine another outcome. I can’t imagine a trial, a prison cell, a conclusion to the nightmare of violence and bloodshed that has happened over the last 10 years (and before, given bin Laden’s previous attacks). 

There is no conclusion because those who are dead will not come back to life. We won’t get back that serene life we lived before “the war on terror,” (whatever that means now). I will not forget the sense of extreme anxiety and panic of being in New York in those days after the attack. Neither will I forget the palpable sense of relief I felt six weeks later, leaving the city for a weekend in Vermont.  But, I went back, and lived in New York for another three years.  That uneasy feeling did subside, but the feeling of being out of sync never quite did. I still grieve that something that felt at the time like “my tragedy” (which of course, it wasn’t) had been used to justify bringing tragedy on others.

Tragedy is the word here. It’s tragic on all fronts.  Tragic, so many lives lost; tragic, the failure of imagination; tragic, this whole web of violence we are stuck in. Bin Laden himself was one the face of violence; a teenager caught in gang crossfire is another, as is his killer.  But, it is never good news when someone is killed.  It is good news that the military works courageously. It is good news that intelligence agents figured out where he was. It is good news that people love this country and want to serve.  But there is no justice in killing, even those who perpetrate terrible, terrible acts.  Two Sundays ago, I was talking with some parishioners at coffee hour at church and learned of the killing of Muammar Qadaffi’s son and grandchildren.  Again and again, more tragedy. We become immune to it. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Where next?

As a Christian, I try to reach for another truth.  Try, but I don’t always succeed. The usual way it goes in the world is that “might makes right,” the powerful are supposed to win. In the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, we say  “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Especially in Easter season, we focus on the resurrection, the result of God’s sacrificial love and Christ’s unwillingness to trade evil for evil. The resurrection says that death never has the last word.  The crucifixion was not the end for Jesus, and it wasn’t the end for the Christian story. Christ was raised for all, not just for those who feel they deserve him. God is bigger than any one religion.

At the end of the day, it may be that how we feel doesn’t matter much.  I’m certainly not going to tell anyone else how to feel. Feelings are just that what they are — feelings. They’re information. We don’t control them. You’re not a bad person if you’re happy about bin Laden’s death. You’re not a paragon of moral restraint and virtue if you aren’t.  But, we can pay attention to what they are, and consider how we respond to them.  How do we pray about our feelings? How do we ask that “holy angels may us in paths of peace and goodwill?” as the prayers in Book of Common prayer say. How can we reach out, in love, to those who suffer? To those who serve in the military, who sacrifice so much? To those who dedicate themselves to peace, giving us the imagination to see a different way of life?