“As crowds gathered outside the White House, there was little question that Mr. Obama’s presidency had forever been changed.” -NY Times
Tonight, Osama Bin Laden is no more. After 10 long years, we’ve got him. This has to be the biggest news of our time, second only to 9/11 itself. We lived through that atrocity, and we live to see it avenged. It is so beautiful to see my peers rallied around something so real. By this time next week we’ll all be dispersed again, but right now we are united. We are one. It is just like after 9/11. The flags went up. Our hearts went out. America bled as a nation, grieved as a nation, and now it celebrates as a nation.
On this day, 66 years ago, the death of Hitler was announced. This is our generation. This is our time. This is our history. America, stay strong. Americans, be the change this world needs. My friends, let this remind us we do not live in a bubble. The world goes on, whether we acknowledge it or not. Tonight we may celebrate, tomorrow we will discuss, and the day after we must face the unchanging world. The world is in peril. We are the youth of this nation; we are the power; we are the future. Will we take our stand?
We need not be heroes, we need only be citizens, brothers, and friends. That is our responsibility, our duty, our mission.
To America.
P.S. I really do not enjoy celebrating Bin Laden’s death. Was he terrible? Yes. Did he kill or plan to kill tons of people? Yes. But did he deserve death? I don’t really think we should choose who lives and who dies, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. I know you could easily say he deserved death, and I could almost even say it myself. But it still doesn’t quite sit right with me. Maybe in the world we live it makes sense. But that just makes me wonder how screwed up our world is that we celebrate the death of another.