A few minutes after the news of the Osama Bin Laden's timely death diffused wildly across the electronic corridors, I freed myself from the grasp of the commentariat and went to a bar on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. I went for reasons I couldn't immediately identify, somewhere between wanting to celebrate and not wanting to sit at my desk for another few hours, mouth-breathing and pouring over the social media deluge.
At the bar, the mood was festive despite the late Sunday hour and I was instantly greeted by two guys in their 50s, Lou and Gordon, who were sort of rough hewn and drunk and very excited by the news.
"WE GOT HIM," they shouted alternatively, unleashing high-fives to anyone who'd reluctantly take them.
They introduced themselves as native New Yorkers and we spoke for a minute before I posted up with a glass of whiskey and (to fulfill the cliché) watched the news I wasn't able to see at home where I don't have cable. While people came in and out, the commentary at the bar and on the screen continued apace. Chuck Schumer was outside of his apartment some blocks away on Prospect Park West giving remarks on NY1, while a few people at the bar discussed whether reprisal attacks could be expected. Next we were transmitted inside the Long Island living room of Peter King, who praised the operation more effusively than even Schumer had. Despite the moment, a few people found the energy to summon up some stunningly casual profanity about King before returning to their drinks.
Shortly after, the newscast ended and Gordon and Lou were back, urging me to hop in a cab to Ground Zero with them. My tab was short of the credit card minimum, the bartender suggested a beer ("How about a Budweiser?") and while I pounded the beer, they ordered a round of shots for the three of us.
"To that dead motherfucker," said Lou.
"To that dead motherfucker," Gordon chimed back, I sort of mumbled it.
The cab driver seemed neither perplexed nor completely understanding when Gordon explained that we wanted to go to Ground Zero. The car radio had the news going and we listened to it as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on what still appeared to be a quiet Monday morning. We had passed the point where we needed to discuss what this meant for us, the stories of where we were or who we knew had become moot across these nine years, which may explain what was so sudden and (somewhat) sobering about the news.
Beneath it all, I imagine, a lot of us had capitulated or simply become too anxious about what baggage had accumulated on the road to a compound in Abbottabad, deeper both in Pakistan and our imaginations than we expected to have to look. Until tonight.
The cab stopped a few blocks shy of the World Trade Center site where the shouts of a gathered crowd were wildly audible. I split off from my two escorts who wanted to hold back at the perimeter where a more solemn assembly of firemen and police held court. Both offered extraordinarily brief hugs. Inside the mass, chants of "USA, USA" carried on while different parts of the crowd started their renditions of "God Bless America," the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance, and Lee Greenwood's allegedly erstwhile "God Bless the USA." One person managed to shout loud enough to tame the unruly crowd into observing a moment of silence, the only sense of order in the early going. Following the quiet, the vuvuzelas sounded and some scattered flags waved among handmade signs and more cameras and smartphones than seemingly possible.
At first, the group consisted largely of college students, most likely by way of the Pace or New School dorms nearby, who with paper cups and cigarettes in hand, shouted and sang and then stood, unsure of how to celebrate the moment. There was a lot of unsaid "what now," which came and left when a new cheer or song began.
The instinct to become critical of the fervor sort of dissipated when I imagined that these kids, freshmen and sophomores especially, had only been 9 or 10 on September 11th and had come of age beneath a national pall of anxiety and impotence. If these celebrations came off as too muscular, too fratty, or too unfeeling to the onlooker, it seemed unfair to blame the kids who might have finally shaken off a barrier that had segmented their youth from those who had the good luck to effloresce in the indomitable America of the post-Cold War years.
As if to punctuate this, two guys in their early 20s clamored up a traffic light and stood beneath the sign for Church Street, where the prayers had been answered. While the crowd roared, celebratory items made their way up, a cardboard sign "Obama 1, Osama 0," an American flag, and finally a bottle of champagne, with which the grateful crowd was sprayed. Stories above the fray, the windows of the Millennium Hotel were silhouetted by guests looking over the scene.
By the time the boys climbed down, the television crews had planted themselves, memorial candles had found their way in, and new groups of revelers had arrived by dozen, more kids, firefighters, ROTC crews, and the NYPD. For a while it all shouted before the bagpipes sounding "Amazing Grace" brought about a silence. We weren't there to celebrate the death of an enemy. We were at a wake for a decade lost.
Follow Adam Chandler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AllMyChandler
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.: Osama Bin Laden Dead: A Mindful Response
Susan Piver: Should We Have Celebrated Osama Bin Laden's Death?
Every other consideration must be pushed aside in regard to this awful truth, which is probably why so many avoid it.
It isn't about us. It is about them.
The price paid by so many innocent people for the hubristic vanity of the United States will never be repaid. If some of the families of those killed by the United States join Al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or some new organization bent on seeking justice, revenge, or some other satisfaction for the murder of their families, they will be labeled as "terrorists" and marginalized as human beings.
But to them — and I'm speaking of those who were innocent before the United States victimized them — the United States is the terrorist.
Climbing a lightpole, drinking in a bar, dancing in the street, waving a flag, singing the obscenely self-congratulatory "God Bless America" — all in ignorance or disregard of the damage done by this country to the lives of countless human beings half a world away.
This was no victory. Humanity lost.
We must work to eliminate those who threaten innocents, but America needs to realize that war without innocent casualties is a fantasy. By using violence we risk becoming the very kind of people we claim to fight against.
http://reservednihilist.tumblr.com/
I watched it on the news. I didnt cheer at all. Im glad they got him. Would have prefered caught him.
SO he could have gone to jail here.
My first thoughts went to the ppl who were lost on 9/11. Also their families.
We all stood together after 9/11. It took awhile then we seemed to have forgot.
I would like to think we can maybe just maybe stand together now.
Bring our troops home now.
Hopefully maybe we can have some peace now.......................
Oh, I don't know, act with some restraint? Feel a quiet satisfaction if you must, but celebrating--while fellow citizens are still mourning their loved ones who have died for nothing fighting this @$+*%# war? Sometimes I think we're better people than that, but not at moments like this.
Why didn't they just capture him and drag him alive through the streets, until he was dead. I'm sure we'd be cheering them on.
Humanity at it's lowest. We are right down in the sewer alongside Al Queda.
here's an age old axiom: vigilante-like celebration for "justice accomplished " is cathartic individually and to a nation.
It was shameful, actually. Have they lost moral bearing?
But they're kids.
Personally, it put a rotten face on us however--made us no different than those overseas who cheered after 9-11.
Well-put.
The death of Usama Bin Ladin has removed one small, but extremely dark cloud from our horizon. We have one less stressor, one less effective madman, to worry about today. Perhaps, with less stress, we can begin our trip back to national sanity and face the problems our nation and our world needs to face.
Congradulations to President Obama, who removed a mocking fanatical bully and who has shown himself a far better President than the delusional George W Bush.
Maybe our guy won by a judges decision at the end, but it's hard to feel good about the "victory" while turning away in revulsion from his bloody, toothless, and permanently disfigured face.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that" ~Martin Luther King, Jr
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/