Thoughts On Osama bin Laden

It cost the United States $1.2 trillion dollars, ten years, and over 900,000 deaths to finally get Osama bin Laden. Granted not all of the money or treasure was used just to get him. We spent needlessly in places where he was not and for reasons that don’t make any sense.

Now that he’s dead, who won? We as Americans are still scared. We still have to go through full body scans and shoe checks at the airport. We still have the Patriot Act which takes away our rights as Americans if we were to be called a terrorist. We still torture. We still have Gitmo opened. We still have two wars going on that had nothing to do with bin Laden.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and basically everything we did post 9/11, we made al Qaeda stronger. Instead of one big branch, they separated. Store owners, ordinary citizens, and people who have nothing to do with bin Laden can be al Qaeda. They saw us steamroll into their country, killing their people; we breed that hate. We responded to their violence with more violence.

I do have to point out, I appreciate how they buried bin Laden at sea, like an Islamic funeral; instead of lord knows what some people in this country would have preferred.

However, I’m sure us cheering in every major city in the US that he was dead angered some too. (Remember how we saw some Muslims cheering that September 11th happened?) Why can’t we be better than that? If we’re so “exceptional” how come we torture, how come we celebrate our enemies deaths? I believe that just gives them more reasons to hate us.