Today, I am proud of our military. I'm proud of our intelligence community for their work in tracking OBL down. I'm proud to be an American, as always. But, I am really struggling in celebrating a death. I can celebrate this as a military victory, which it is, but reveling in the death of another human being is difficult for me. I say, let's leave the judgement and punishment up to whatever god to whom he has trusted his soul. This piece from an organization called GOOD puts this in perspective. We say that we're 'exceptional' and better than other countries in the world. How are we living up to that image in this moment? Read the article for some food for thought. I know I don't have a good answer to that question because I have a very strange internal struggle going on. http://su.pr/8qh3qC
To slightly switch gears, the thing about the whole situation that really gets me are the people who are saying that young people and college students shouldn't be out in the streets cheering and celebrating this victory because they were too young when it happened to really know what was going on. I would argue that if anyone knows what 9/11 means, it is those of us who were young when it happened.
9/11 has defined our adult lives. Everything changed that day, that moment when my 8th grade science teacher came into the room and couldn't even look at my class when she turned her back to us and tearfully told us what happened. My best friend sitting next to me had an uncle that worked in the WTC, but for some reason he wasn't at work that day. I remember that 9/11 was a Tuesday because one of my closest friends moved away the following weekend. I remember when I didn't know what weapons of mass destruction were. I remember when I didn't know who Al Qaeda was or why they wanted to kill us. Just months before 9/11, I had traveled to see my father and flew into the Atlanta airport. He, my grandparents and one of my cousins were waiting right at the gate for me.
Yes, adults may have known what those planes crashing really meant sooner than we did. We may not have realized all the terror that Al Qaeda and bin Laden had been causing around the world before that day, but we are the ones who have been affected most. Post-9/11 America has shaped our mindsets. For those who are even younger than I was on that day, their lives have always been this way with tight security and terror, WMD and Al Qaeda as household names.
A class of communications students at American University coincidentally produced a comprehensive project about the way our generation has been affected by 9/11 that was published online just days before bin Laden was killed. Growingup9-11.com has articles, surveys, and videos that document reactions and results of being so young when the attacks occurred. It also provides some interesting insights on why Millenials (as our generation is called) do the things that we do and the way we live our lives. There are a lot of reflections on the way Muslims have been treated since the attacks and the way our worldviews have broadened after this foreign enemy came to our shores. At 13 years old, I suddenly knew things about Islam, Afghanistan, and terrorism that I never would have anticipating ever knowing at that age. Interestingly, rather than fearing more attacks and dwelling on a hatred of Muslims or Middle Eastern people, this generation has been able to recognize that racial and religious profiling that adults proliferated post-9/11. We've become more globally-minded and interested in foreign policy, less confident in our government. Most of us are unsure of who to blame for this tragedy, some even believing that the American government planned and carried out the attacks.
In short, that day 9 1/2 years ago changed all of our lives forever, no matter how young or old.