Mixed Emotions

When I first heard that we'd killed Osama bin laden yesterday I was overjoyed!  "Yea, we GOT him!"  I praised!  Then as the evening wore on and I began to think it through I have to say that first I liked a facebook pot:  An Eye for an Eye.  Right on!!!  But then I began to think.......well now there will most definitely be more terror hits.  Don't Americans know how these people work?  They now have a big Martyr.  More Americans will surely die.  And as I continued to sit in silence on this subject I began to think of the fact that I don't believe that violence is the answer to a violent action.  

I am an American.  I saw the buildings crumble and the ensuing result of the effects of 9/11 amongst my family.  My husband Dennis was working in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where many planes were sent after finding out they could no longer get clearance to land stateside.  We were on the phone constantly that day because we had NO idea what being out of the US meant for getting him back in!  Firstly, all the planes which landed there didn't have enough fuel to get back out once they could fly back to the US.  They had to wait for fuel to be brought in.  

Luckily, he'd driven to Toronto and his car was parked there.  So he kept his rental car and drove the long trip back to Toronto to pick his car up there.  Kudos to National Car Rental for allowing him (and scores of other stranded passengers) to drive through to other provinces with no fees (you aren't allowed to go from one province to another in rental cars in Canada without major fees and permission). National was the only rental car agency to void all driving restrictions and fees (upwards to $1,000 for those not so lucky!)  It took him two days to drive back and then to get his car and make for the Michigan border (I was still in Michigan for our retail season.)  We weren't sure at that point how long or IF he'd be able to cross.

Den sat for over 18 hours at the border waiting for clearance to get back into Michigan.  So this journey back to us was long and fretful.  I remember him telling me that he was glad McKenna and I were in "Podunk, MI" because he figured we were as safe as we could be at the moment.  Those were the days when we thought every sound was more stuff waiting to happen.  I likened it to the stories my Mom used to tell of the blackouts during WWII in Lansing when she was very young.

My generation until that point had been pretty left out of war.  Other than Desert Storm (when Mom, Dad and I were in Cancun, Mexico and wondering what would happen if they wouldn't let us back into the US and THAT was more disturbing than being in Canada let me tell you!)

Dennis had a very hard time with 9/11.  I think many, especially men, had issues with processing it.  Watching television with bad news every day.  Watching the towers fall again and again and again.  It was ingrained.  Then the politics of it.  The searching.  The off course happiness with going after Iran and Saddam.  (Say what?  Why???? Stupid!)  Now almost ten years later we find and kill Osama.  Osama, not Usama FOX NEWS!  Quit trying to make it Obama you assholes! (little rant).

So I am an American.  I feel sooooooo bad about the thousands of people who died in the towers and planes,they were  Heros, they mattered.  I am not discounting their lives.  I think that justice should have been served and  I'm sickened that Osama wasn't taken alive and made to live every day in a small cell. But I'm kind of sickened too about people shouting and partying in the streets with news of his death.  Are we no different than those who did unto us?  Doesn't that bring us down to their level?  That is NOT a place I want to be.  I want to be the better person.  The better nation.  I want to be proud to be an American again.

In the word of Martin Luther King:  
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.




He said it much better than I did.  Please just think of these words and their meanings.  We might all learn again from them and go forward with less negative and more positive.  More light and less dark.  I choose not to be like Osama bin laden.  I choose to be in the light.