[Mister Bent]

"They say that revenge is a dish that's best served cold. We've been waiting a long time for this particular dish to cool, and now that I've eaten it, I'm surprised to find that it's pretty tasteless and unsatisfying."

This article succinctly sums it up for me; acknowledging that bin Laden's death was, effectively, mere retaliation. We gain nothing. We are not safer, no troops are coming home, the waste that was the war in Iraq (where were the weapons of mass destruction? Did we end or even deter terrorism as a result?) can't be erased.

Ten years later, I feel none of the righteous joy that I expected. It mostly just fills me with grief for all the deaths between then and now that should never have happened. I'm glad we've taken a terrorist out of circulation, of course. But maybe because I'm older, and mortality seems all too depressingly real, I find it hard to celebrate anyone's death--no, not even Bin Laden's. The families of the victims deserved some satisfaction, of course, and a certainly hope they got it. But these days, all of humanity seems so fragile to me, the universes of our minds so easily destroyed. No matter how much Team Death deserves to win, I find it hard to cheer when the Grim Reaper does his victory dance in the end zone.

Don't get me wrong: I do not think killing Bin Laden was morally or even tactically wrong. I just think it's profoundly unsatisfying. We won't recover any of the things that he took from us, or even the things we took from ourselves, like the ability to travel around the country without being treated like a potential terrorist. Destroying Osama did not unmake him, which is what I really wanted. He may be dead, but we're still living with him.

(Emphasis mine.)