I was making my now-customary late-night drive down I-10 heading back from Birmingham to the paradise that is the Mississippi Gulf Coast when I heard the guy on the radio say that Osama Bin Laden was dead.
Shortly after that, I got a text on my phone that said, "Obama is dead!" from someone who would be embarassed to be identified but who could be forgiven for juxtaposing names in a moment of what I suppose was celebration or wonder.
In fact, just a few minutes later, the same radio commentator of a late-Sunday-night talk show who broke the news to me about Osama's death was trying to fill in details when he blurted out, "Obama was shot in the head! ... I mean, Osama was shot in the head,'' and over the next few minutes apologized profusely for the error.
An honest mistake; one that I don't believe for a minute was malicious. The names are too similar, and neither are common to the American tongue.
I don't believe it is the right of America to take out the leader of another country unless we're actively at war with that country. I believe in self-determination, and that belief has to carry over to other people in other countries as well. If they don't like their government, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new forms of government - a phrase I read somewhere.
But I honestly believe the death of Bin Laden was justified as an act of war. While he was not the leader of any identifiable country, he was the head of an organization that had repeatedly claimed to be at war with America. He accepted and boasted in responsibility for so many of the most horrific terrorist attacks of the last 20 years - both before and after the events of September 11, although the events of September 11 alone seem to me enough to warrant this kind of action against him.
The death of Bin Laden means that people who want peace can sleep a little better, knowing one threat is removed.
At the same time, the people who plot evil against peace-loving people of the world have to be sleeping a little less easy, wondering if they could be next.
While I am not necessarily opposed to the death penalty, I have always had this uneasy feeling that death was too easy of a way out for the truly evil. Selfishly, I would prefer the people who do us wrong are left alive and somehow made to live with the knowledge that they did not get away with their evil.
On the other hand, I do believe in eternity. And I do believe that Bin Laden knows right now what he's guilty of having done, fully understands the depths of his cruelty, and is feeling every bit of the pain of those people he or his minions hurt in his life.
It reminds me of a joke that seems to fit right now. Bin Laden dies and is taken to a room where he stands with the angel Gabriel, who according to Islam took the prophet Muhammed on his vision of paradise. Expecting his reward for being a devote Muslim, instead the door opens and George Washington comes into the room and hits him across his face. Bin Laden stands up, and Thomas Jefferson walks in and slams Bin Laden with the back of his hand. Bin Laden staggers to his feet again, and Robert E. Lee walks in and gives him a direct shot to the nose.
"What is this?'' Bin Laden cries. "Where are the 72 virgins promised to me by the Qu'ran?"
"Virgins?'' Gabriel said. "Oh, no - you misunderstood. It's 72 Virginians!"
Ba-dum-dum.
The point is that as much as I might feel like Bin Laden escaped my standard of justice, as much as we might like to determine fitting punishment for enemies such as Bin Laden, in the end Bin Laden did not - and will not - escape his trial before God.
And he will know for all time a level of pain and suffering far beyond any he inflicted in his miserable life.
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