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Kids Cheer In NYC Over Osama Bin Laden’s Death
Children in Times Square last night after the news broke that Bin Laden was dead.
I sat with my older girls last night when the news came through that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces. We watched the coverage and eagerly awaited the official word from the President. It stirred up a lot of emotions because while there was some relief in the realization that the leader of Al Qaeda was no more, it also brought me right back to the horror of September 11th.
I distinctly remember picking up my Katie from Pre-K as I shielded her face from the ashy cinders that descended over our Brooklyn neighborhood. Last night, many celebrated saying that justice had been done. Numbers of people poured out into the streets of NYC, some with children in tow holding handmade signs claiming victory. Many of the kids were barely old enough to understand what has happened, yet they were cheering that someone was dead. It was unsettling.
Let me preface this by saying that I am pleased that President Obama completed the mission that has been ten years in the making. I am thankful to our troops and servicemen and women who have given up their lives to keep our country safe. But I am disturbed at how some people are making this news akin to a Super Bowl win and a party atmosphere. It’s not a celebration and we shouldn’t teach our kids that it is.
It’s not a ‘we won, you lost’ situation. We all lost. Our country lost a whole lot, over 3,000 people who perished in the Twin Towers, Pentagon and on Flight 93, and countless more who have been killed in combat since then.
Plus, getting Bin Laden is just the beginning. There are so many more terrorists out there and Bin Laden has had plans implemented for years about exactly how Al Qaeda should operate without him. Today, our subway systems, bridges, and airports are crawling with armed police waiting for retaliation. This can be quite a confusing thing for kids. When my son got up and saw the news, the first thing he said was, “I’m scared. Are they coming here?”
Isn’t celebrating a death the very opposite of what we should do as parents and Americans? I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t feel satisfied or even proud that our country stood up for those who were senselessly killed, but we shouldn’t make it a party, don our kids in hate-filled t-shirts and light fireworks (as they did in my neighborhood).
We need to take a reverent stance and not teach our children to jump up and down because the big bad U.S. defeated the ultimate bad guy. It is so much more complicated than that. And it’s not over. Bin Laden’s death does not bring back any of the victims to the devastated family members. I hope it might bring them some closure, but for many it won’t. Their mother, father, son, husband, daughter remains gone forever.
There is a time for celebration when we rejoice, when an event is purely good and joyous, but now is a time for solemn pride in our country and somber reflection on what brought us here to this day.
Image: Buzzfeed
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[...] chanting “USA! USA!” like they are at some kind of sporting event, encouraging your children to wave signs celebrating someone’s death or all of the Tweets and Facebook statuses from people with vengeance coursing through their veins. [...]
Crunchy Domestic Goddess » What Are We Teaching Our Kids With Our Reactions to Osama bin Laden’s Death? commented on May 04 11 at 10:30 amChiLaura commented on May 02 11 at 2:39 pmI completely agree. As one of my friends posted on Facebook: “Yet our relief at his death must be tempered by a Christian view of humanity. We must never forget that the evil comes not from the actions of subhuman vermin but from the heart of a fallen, sacred yet degraded, human being.”
Whatever justice has been done, or whatever other terrorist attacks have been averted, we still have several human beings killed. Maybe relief and even pride (at a mission accomplished, a nation “doing its job”) are understandable and “okay,” but celebration is cruel.
A friend pointed out the parallel of Arabs or Muslims celebrating various attacks on America and the West in the streets.
goddess commented on May 02 11 at 3:25 pm@Danielle: Too bad we can’t go back and lecture those who celebrated, yes CELEBRATED V-E and V-J Day too. This may not have been a victory of the whole war, but it was the celebration of one battle in it.
@chilaura: tell your friend that those Arabs/Muslims were celebrating the deaths of unwary and innocent thousands while the people last night were actually celebrating the mastermind of those attacks. Epic fail on analogy.
Mistress_Scorpio commented on May 02 11 at 4:01 pmNah, I think the analogy is apt. Do I feel a sense of relief that OBL has been done away with? Yeah. But we are not celebrating the end of a war here, where loved ones are coming home. Along with over 5K of our military, many thousands of unwary and innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan have been killed. We’ve seen and unprecedented encroachment on civil and privacy rights of Americans, turned air travel into a dog and pony show that does not make us safer and accepted torture as a means to an end. Maybe OBL lost his life, but he certainly scored a mighty victory against what we used to embrace as Americans.
Jerri Ann Reason commented on May 02 11 at 4:36 pmI basically felt the same way and felt a little weird earlier today when people took offense to my thoughts that by cheering his death, we were almost giving him what he was looking for in the first place; a change America. His entire plan all along was to change the state of the U.S. and while we really had no choice but to do what we started so many years ago, I’m thinking we should have been a little less boastful about it. But, who am I to say really? I didn’t fight, I didn’t lose life or limb. My husband is an Iraq veteran. He saw it completely different. Just sayin’
ChiLaura commented on May 02 11 at 5:37 pm@Goddess: I personally don’t think that Americans celebrating Bin Laden’s death and Arabs or Muslims celebrating American deaths is *exactly* the same. However, death is still death, killing is still killing, and humans are still human, no matter what they are capable of.
Danielle Sullivan commented on May 02 11 at 6:22 pm@Chilaura “A friend pointed out the parallel of Arabs or Muslims celebrating various attacks on America and the West in the streets.” I thought the exact same thing…..people in my neighborhood spray painted “Rot in Hell Osama” on their car windows and then picked up their kids.
K Annie commented on May 02 11 at 7:05 pmThis isn’t a time to celebrate, it’s a time to be reflective. I’m disturbed by all the hooting and hollering, too. I’m very grateful to the men and women who were assigned this task- and accomplished it–but I am not happy to see families celebrating this. I keep thinking about It’s a Wonderful Life and George Bailey. I think the line is “on d-day he wept and prayed and on v-day he wept and prayed.” I’m not the praying type, but that seems like the exact right reaction. We should always seek guidance and reflection when we are the victims and likewise when we are the victors.
Deano commented on May 02 11 at 7:24 pmI’d say that expecting anything resembling objectivity from New Yorkers is just expecting too much.
This article wasn’t written about the massive celebrations on the part of kids in Kansas City for a reason… Everyone in NYC wears their “9/11 heart” pinned to the very end of their sleeve, and the rest of us just need to stand back, let them vent, and try to politely moderate the conversation in ways that don’t send us knee-jerking into yet another war, or accidentally cause us to strip away the freedoms that actually make the US a more interesting/fun/hopeful place to be than some of our philosophical “enemy states”.
I didn’t lose anyone to the fall of the towers. I do lose a little more dignity every time I travel. The death of thousands, turned into the death of liberty. How did we get here, and what kind of horrible way to honor loved ones lost… :/
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