Champagne and Celebration at Ground Zero Following Death of Osama bin Laden

Powerful men are well advised not to use violence,
For violence has a habit of returning;
Thorns and weeds grow wherever an army goes,
And lean years follow a great war.

A general is well advised
To achieve nothing more than his orders:
Not to take advantage of his victory.
Nor to glory, boast or pride himself;
To do what is dictated by necessity,
But not by choice.

For even the strongest force will weaken with time,
And then its violence will return, and kill it.

                      The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 30: Violence

Diane Massaroli stood out from those around her on Church Street in Lower Manhattan, a soft-spoken woman with a patient stance, carrying a portrait of her husband, Michael. On that Tuesday morning nearly ten years ago, as she was preparing her children for school, her phone rang. She was unable to answer it in time, and missed the call. It had been her husband, Michael Massaroli, a VP for Cantor Fitzgerald, who was working on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center.

Last night Diane made her way to Ground Zero and stood by quietly while people gathered to celebrate the news that Osama bin Laden, widely recognized as the architect of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been killed in an operation conducted by US Navy SEALs and authorized by President Obama.

"We've been waiting nine years, seven months, and twenty days for this day," Diane said last night. "I never thought I would see this day in my lifetime, but I can only hope we're able to open a new chapter because of it."

Her demeanor in this bittersweet moment, as that of many 9/11 victim's families, seemed in direct contrast to the cheering, chanting and singing of the largely youthful crowd. Periodic chants of "U-S-A" and "Obama got Osama" cycled in between the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner or God Bless America, the popping of champagne corks and the waving of signs and flags. It was this generation of 18-25 year olds who defined these first, sudden outpourings of raw emotion across the country.

After a nearly 10-year hunt, the word that Osama bin Laden had been killed was met with spontaneous scenes of jubilation by many Americans. Given the often xenophobic character of the protests that had opposed plans for the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero just a year before, people can be forgiven the assumption that these rallies would be more of the same; they were anything but. Few there had ever sung the national anthem except to mouth the words at professional sporting events. They sang off key, forgetting some of the words, mangling others. But that didn't matter tonight. They waved whatever American flags they could find (including one oddly with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe), and climbed traffic light posts, while others, falling back to concert traditions, crowd-surfed. Children of first generation Middle Eastern immigrants, Latinos, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, whites, Muslims, Jews -- and even the odd Canadian -- all shared one thing in common that night: overwhelming relief and joy that Osama bin Laden, the one who masterminded the destruction that lead to the death of over 3,000 people on that very spot nearly ten years ago, had finally gotten what was coming to him.

More often than not, they had not lost a loved one at Ground Zero, but you could tell from people's faces who had and who had not. Many though, either were or knew others in active duty military service in Iraq or Afghanistan. For the most part, those gathered were of a generation who can scarcely remember the world that existed before September 11th, and yet have had their entire being shaped by that event and the subsequent wars. For them, far more than the older observers and participants, this was not an end, but a beginning finally made possible.

The diversity of those present was in sharp contrast to the divisions and preconceptions that have been built up and propagated over the past ten years, and what it means to American society. We have been divided for far too long. That division has often been tinged with racism and bigotry, questions of patriotism and accusations of treason, the mistrust and labeling of others, to the point where it is inseparable in the minds of many from the people taking either side. If you agree with one idea, you are a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer; if you agree with the other, you are bigot and fascist.

No one present that night, perhaps, had challenged those preconceptions more than Lieutenant Daniel Choi. The son of a Korean-American Baptist minister, Choi graduated West Point in 2003 and served in the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq. In March 2009, he came out as homosexual on The Rachel Maddow Show. As a result, he was discharged from the Army and began active opposition to the policy of "don't ask, don't tell." After its repeal, his commission was reinstated and in December 2010, he submitted a request to re-enlist.

Last night at Ground Zero, Lieutenant Choi climbed a traffic light above the crowd in full military uniform and lead those assembled in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, to rousing cheers. If that in itself offends some, then I'm not sure what to say, except that this was not a rally of bigots, shouting simply to satisfy some twisted quest for racial or religious vengeance. I fault no one for private misgivings about how they wish to mark this event, but I've seen more misplaced patriotism in a bar on St. Patrick's Day than there that night, but despite this, the Internet critics are already in overdrive.

In editorials, on blog posts, in online communities and comments sites, many have decried the celebrations of the death of Osama bin Laden as inappropriate, barbaric or worse. The sentiment is described as a kind of morbid, visceral act, and the people who express joy at his end as some form of sociopath. A celebration of vengeance, not justice. Offensive. Jingoistic.

When I sent my 81-year old father the videos above, he said it sounded just like V-J Day in 1945 that he remembered from when he was 15. Watching the night unfold in front of the big hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once loomed, I thought of that famous Times Square photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse while dipping her in his arms. That moment came on the heels of a 6-year long war in which over 60 million people were killed, including as many as 200,000 or more from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone. If any celebration might be considered morbid revelry, V-J Day would make a far stronger contender, but it isn't. Those celebrations marked the final end of the most destructive war in human history, as well as the evil men who began it. Of all the appropriate times for mass celebration, this is one of them.

Now, for anyone who has never wished ill upon another human being ever, or has never lifted one finger or paid one cent that's been used to harm another, you have to be a virgin saint (and likely, you're also evading taxes). But for the rest of us, hearing that THE person who caused so much pain and trauma to our city and to the people in it has finally met a well-deserved and inglorious end IS something to be welcomed. Pass the champagne.

Let's not forget how others in the world have commented on this. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said: "[bin Laden's] killing is an act of justice to those Kenyans who lost their lives and the many more who suffered injuries [in the Nairobi bombings]." From Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari: "We, like many people in the world, are delighted to see an end to his mentality and his devious ideology. Thousands of Iraqis were murdered and killed because of his ideologies." Similar statements have been made throughout the world, from Lebanon to Russia. In fact, the only statements expressing misgivings about his death are from the Pakistani Taliban, Hamas, and the Venezuelan government. Not surprising.

I want nothing more than for men like Dick Cheney to be wrong, that this is not "a war without end," with no possibility of peace, ever, because the alternative is nothing but the choice between nihilism and authoritarianism or the cynical comfort of recursive conspiracy theories. Real justice would be ridding the world of all evil, all war, all the horrors we've created. But I'll settle for this one moment right now.

So, as for Osama bin Laden, let him pass unmourned, a violent man whose violence returned, and killed him.

Addendum: One contrast that was immediately apparent in retrospect, but largely unremarked in the editorializing (myself included) over the tenor of the celebrations by ordinary people, was the precise lack of spectacle to Obama's statement regarding the event in comparison to President Bush's flamboyant 'Mission Accomplished' carrier landing exactly eight years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln. The glory-hounding swagger, boasting and pride displayed in that 2003 speech was almost entirely absent from Obama's statement, and all the more remarkable given the nature of each: in 2003, the Iraq War had hardly begun, while the end of Osama bin Laden is quite definitive.

Speaking to my own father, who was an 11 year old New Yorker when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and 15 years old with an older brother in the Merchant Marine for both V-E Day, the news of Hitler's death and V-J Day, was also instructive. I asked him what people's reactions were to those events, and he said this:

My dad: "Oh, when people heard of Hitler's death, they went wild. This was followed by V-E Day and everyone I can remember around there at the time was celebrating in the streets. It was more subdued because, especially in Europe, soldiers figured they would be shipped off to the Pacific immediately. So a lot of people took Hitler's death in stride because the war wasn't really over."

Me: "How about V-J Day?"

My dad: "For V-J Day, everyone went crazy at the news of that. [World War Two] was a horrendous war, and we nearly damn well lost it, if Hitler hadn't been such a fat stupid fool, but we nearly lost it if a few things had been different. I was against the use of the atom bomb - I thought it could have been just as effective if we had demonstrated what we had off the coast or on a mountain - but generals at the time were expecting a million casualties if we had tried to invade Japan. And these were celebrations all over, in England as well as the US. People definitely celebrated Hitler's death - he was Hitler. And I think a lot of people have the same reaction to this now, and maybe see it as the end of the war in a way."

Me: "Someone on a site I read compared it to Star Wars where the Ewoks celebrate when the Death Star blew up."

My dad: "Oh sure. That's right. I think it was a lot like that where the things [Ewoks] cheered when the Death Star blew up. I think that's a good analogy."