Stephen Roper MY Internet was down the day news of Osama bin Laden’s death was disclosed. A friend informed me over lunch and I was, for a moment, speechless. I never thought we would actually find him if he was, in fact, alive. And, finally, I couldn’t believe we killed him. No trial. No judge. Just something akin to a straight-up execution. When I finally started reading newspapers and learning more about what happened, I was left with very conflicting emotions: 1) this is a great thing for my country, and… 2) this is a terrible thing for my country. Look, bin Laden was a terrible person. Any man with enough hatred in his heart to mastermind an operation like 9/11 is a threat to peace and safety for everyone. Pure and simple. The group he led, al-Qaida, used the mentally handicapped as well as children as young as 12 years old for suicide bombings. He, among other terrorists, is responsible for the deadliest ever attack on the United States. I’m sorry, but a man — white, black, Asian, or Middle-Eastern, it makes no difference — responsible for these things does not deserve to walk around as a free man. He’s an inarguable menace and I challenge someone to argue otherwise. So was I happy that he’d been brought to some sort of justice? Yes. For purely political reasons, Obama needed something like this to happen because it was up in the air as to whether he would be re-elected. And I want him to be re-elected because I think he’s a great leader for my country. And this helps his chances. Hence me being happy. But there’s also an ugly side to this coin. The operation — while in my eyes justified — only reinforced the gun-slinging, world-policing image Obama has tried to erase during his presidency. Done in total secrecy with no aid from other countries, it’s another bullet point for critics that want to peg the United States as a world-sheriff above its own laws. Not only that, it has increased exponentially the possibility of another terrorist attack on American soil. With Osama’s death we have kicked the proverbial beehive. And, finally, I think one of the biggest problems with bin Laden’s death is that we will never get to learn from him. Imagine if we had taken him into custody and been able to ask him the most basic of questions: why? Why did he hate the West so much that he was willing to commit the atrocities he did? And what, we could have asked, could we do to make our presence as a sovereign state more tolerable, and our way of living less despicable to him and people like him? Victory, if this is to be considered one, often comes at a price. I’m still not sure what it will be. (The author is a former U.S. journalist who is teaching English in Shenzhen.) | 