Ding, Dong

Ding, dong the witch is dead. The celebration from the Wizard of Oz is now being re-enacted across the Western world, but mostly in the good ol’ U. S. of A. Though this announcement may very well do much to ease the minds of a people who have lived in fear of one of the biggest boogeymen in history, the victory seems terribly hollow.

Many are already denying that he’s really dead. Some argue that he was already dead a decade ago. Many deniers reject the idea because they see conspiracy in everything. If the government says something happened, they are the first to jump on the idea that it was actually something entirely different. Others, however, deny the death of Osama Bin Laden for purely political reasons—the idea that he was taken down under a president they oppose is just unacceptable, so it didn’t happen.

And that’s one of the many reasons this “victory” is so hollow. Bin Laden could easily have smiled and whispered, “Mission accomplished” as the final breath escaped his lips, for his death is a very small thing compared to the impact the attack he masterminded had on the American people.

It’s time we asked ourselves, was it all worth it? Was it worth two wars and the millions of lives lost? And while one of those wars will forever be inextricably linked to the 9/11 attacks, it had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. Though we may long speculate about why that war was even declared, the real motivations behind it may never be known. The justifications for it changed nearly on a daily basis.

While more easily justifiable, the war in Afghanistan in retrospect seems of dubious merit. Was it worth all the bombing and destruction? The cost in human life? In the end it wasn’t brute force that took down the weasel; it was intelligence gathering and a targeted strike. In light of how it was finally brought about, the war seems the equivalent of killing a mosquito with a cannon. If you see a snake in the basement, do you dynamite your house?

We celebrate his death, but America has suffered the far bigger blow. The “United” at the front of our country’s name seems embarrassingly hollow. The wars have divided us, the political manipulation associated with the wars and with the terrorist attacks have divided us, and now the economic fallout from our investment in those wars has further divided us. Would we even be having the bitter budget debates at this time had we not invested trillions in war?

We are a splintered people whose political allegiances dictate the truths we believe. Forget red and blue; we are a nation of black and white. There are few shades of gray these days in the American social and political landscapes.

We see boogeymen around every corner. We check our freedoms at the airport to feel safer from the boogeymen. We sacrifice our privacy to feel safer from the boogeymen. We spy on each other to feel safer from the boogeymen. We build walls along our borders to lock out the boogeymen. We define more strongly the boundaries between Self and Other. We have sacrificed rationality and civility for hate and anger.

We point fingers, we accuse, we look everywhere but in the mirror. The real boogeyman, after all, isn’t out there; he’s inside each and every one of us. We define the boogeyman. We make him real.

The biggest threats to us and our much-touted freedoms come not from scheming bombers thousands of miles away, but from ourselves.

Now the grand schemer is dead. Whether the wounds that have fractured the nation can be healed remains to be seen. It will no doubt be a long recovery. We have lost our identity. Can we find it again? Do we care enough to try?

Ding, dong. The witch is dead. But America still bleeds from its wounds.