He graduated instantly from distant little terrorist nuisance pest dude to The Bad Guy. Deservedly so: He and his followers perpetrated an evil act on 3,000 innocent bystanders. And in the end, whether the mastermind was in fact bin Laden himself or not, that part is of little consequence. Al Qaeda did this to us, one way or another. (Conspiracy theories are fun, but flimsy.)
There is little way to deny that Osama and his minions, in this battle (I hesitate to call it a war), became the bad guys. We were victims of aggression by an evil band of murderers. We watched it happen. We were struck by evil.
But that didn't automatically turn us into the good guys.
We could have seized the moment and been the goodies, as the Brits like to say. Except that 100,000 dead Iraqis -- real, live men, women and children who perished in an subsequent unnecessary war waged under false pretenses at best -- would like to object. If they could.
So when you celebrate the death of a real bad guy, a mass murderer, for sure, see if you can copy me and try desperately to squeeze three competing thoughts in the back of your crowded mind.
One's from a friend of mine who posted this last night on facebook: "Being glad that anyone is dead is still being glad someone is dead."
Then, this gem, pulled from some clever bumper sticker author: "Who Would Jesus Bomb?"
At last, something from yours truly: "My opponent's wrongness is not some sort of redemptive purifying elixir that absolves me from making compassionate choices. Sometimes, a conflict might not have any good guys."
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