Now that the dust has somewhat cleared, I wonder if it’s okay to say some things that are not negative about the late Osama bin Laden. Don’t get all worked up about it. I’m just saying that there are some things one can say about every human being, even him, that aren’t vitriolic. Since God made us all, we should be able to find it in our hearts to use some emotionally neutral words to talk about even people whom many consider the most reviled human denizens of earth.
We should remember that he was a human being like us all. He started life, like we all did, as a baby in the care of a family who did what they felt was right to raise him to be an independent adult. He had friends and an education. He made good and bad choices, and many of the bad ones have become memorable worldwide. His path in life took him into exile and ended with an untimely demise.
Whatever the future of human relations may turn out to be, we will always remember this man as somebody who killed people to make a point. It has never worked at any point in history, but he tried it anyway. Battlefields have been rivers of blood since before recorded history, and not once has it made human beings any better than before the killings began. After the innocent lives are taken, the perpetrator dies, too, at the hands of others if not by battle wounds or old age. Innocent or guilty, death leaves no chance for redemption, no time to see what other paths are out there.
It’s a shame that human beings do such things to each other. The answers to why we do them are in a place we must die to get to. In the United States we have been in emotional chaos for almost ten years, looking for the end of the pain caused by 9/11. I hope that life provides more answers than death.
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