Don't Ask, Don't Tell...Osama-style

It was a Tuesday.  

I had already worked long enough to induce desperate glances at the clock in hopes that it would soon be time for lunch. 

My desk phone rang. 

Ann calling to say she’d be late wasn’t unusual.  The frantic tone in her voice was.  It took several minutes and many incomplete sentences, for me to realize something truly terrible had happened. 

The need to call my husband was visceral, not so much to relay the news as to hear his voice. 

I would have given anything to call my son.  I fought the urge to pick him up at school, take him home, lock the doors, and hold him…forever. 

It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

The world had just tilted on its axis. 

I shared the small amount of information I had gleaned from Ann with my husband who, in turn, filled in with what he’d heard on the radio.  As he spoke, images of other recent acts of terrorism flashed across my brain.  When he finished I said, “It was Bin Laden.  I know it was.  He’s the only one smart enough, evil enough.  This has his fingerprints all over it.”  And, it did.

I felt a sense of triumph when the Bush administration announced American troops had entered Afghanistan in search of Bin Laden…until they didn’t.  The subterfuge began.  Personal agendas superseded national security, and suddenly Sadam Hussein was painted as the new face of the Taliban. 

And they believed.

People I know to be intelligent, successful people, learned people, people who contribute to their communities, people who knew better, believed.  Even now, as I attempt to write about it, nausea threatens and a whirring begins inside my head.  Everything about that time defied reason.  Everything.

It took decades for me to learn not to worry about things over which I have no control.  The lesson came in handy as I read a memo, circulated by two vice-presidents of our company, forbidding negative commentary about the Bush administration and/or its policies.  The directive was, of course, couched in language less than direct, but the message was clear.  I turned off the television.  I removed NPR from the pre-sets on my car stereo.  I pushed the newspaper out of the way when I sat down to eat lunch.  I dropped out. 

To be honest, I haven’t given much thought to Osama Bin Laden.  Oh, I paid attention when he released videos.  Well, they said he released them, I was never quite sure.

At one point, I heard he had kidney disease.  Soon after that, I began to imagine him dead.  It was a coping mechanism, I’m sure, and goes a long way towards explaining my shock upon hearing he really was.

But, not really. 

The shock came with the words, President Obama’s words, “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden…”

It was the word “killed”. 

Inside my head, the sentence compressed, and I heard “…the United States killed Osama bin Laden…”.  Even now, I get stuck on the word “killed”.  Perhaps his speechwriters could have chosen more carefully? 

“Killed” is raw.  “Killed” is brutal.  “Killed” is harsh, and cold, and violent.  On “24”, Jack Bauer might have used the word “marginalized”.  That’s a good word…

I’m not comfortable with killing.  I don’t kill bugs.  Okay, I’ll kill a cockroach.  But that’s it.  Well, and a bee, but only if he’s expressed an intent to get me first. 

And then, there’s the other side, the side that says, “We created him, and now we’ve destroyed him.”.  I can see justice in that.

I go in late on Mondays.  By the time I get to the office, everyone else has been there for hours.  Even so, I thought someone would say something.  When Joe Biden commits a verbal gaffe (which is, admittedly, almost every time he appears in public) the talk is incessant. 

No one said a word.

I breached the office door of the only other non-dyed-in-the-wool-republican in the building and asked, “Have they talked about it at all?”.  He shook his newly hairless, Carvillesque dome from side to side while wearing a look of reluctant resignation. 

Sometime around ten yesterday morning, I felt relief.  By noon I was ready to admit it.  An older woman, the mother of one of the memo-writing vice-presidents, finally tossed it out there just before she left for the day.

“What do you think about our troops killing Bin Laden?”, she asked, loudly, as she reached for her $400.00 handbag with one hand while flipping the light switch with the other.

An officemate who had recently declared her intent to vote for Donald Trump in 2012 spoke first.  For the first time in a long time, she was proud to be American.  (Cue the fireworks…has anyone seen Lee Greenwood?) 

I admitted feeling relief in knowing Bin Laden was gone.

No one else said a word.

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