Tonight we were tantalized and a little traumatized by an announcement that President Obama was making a late-night announcement to the world. Just last night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, he was poking fun at the obsession with whether or not he was born in the U.S. and slinging barbs with the best of them.
My first thought was he was resigning. But why? Then we thought it might be about Lybia, but that would be something to come from NATO. Suddenly Glenn said, "Bin Laden. They caught bin Laden. It has to be." For quite a while there was no leak, which is really worrying -- it is routine to announce, or leak, the reason for the president to speak. Whatever it was, the announcement was big. It had to be bin Laden.
Then, finally, word seeped out. Bin Laden was dead. When the president finally took to the podium, there was a ragged group of people outside the White House chanting, "USA! USA!" People were already treating it as fact. Information said he was hiding in plain site in a palace in Islamabad. President Obama told us: He was deep in hiding in Pakistan. Good information started coming in last August. Just last week he had given permission to capture or kill bin Laden, and just today he gave the order to go in. U.S. operatives found his hiding place and ended up killing him as they exchanged gunfire. They had his body in U.S. custody.
It is a little hard to absorb, the news that almost 10 years after 9/11 (and eight years to the day since George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" stunt), US Special Ops located and killed Osama bin Laden.
My sense of justice would have preferred to see him captured alive and tried in court after court for years, forcing him to answer for the slaughter of people for no other reason than because they lived a lifestyle he and his followers didn't like.
But tonight, he stands before a more powerful judge, and one Who will not allow him to turn away or hide behind a false interpretation of his faith. Tonight I imagine him hearing words like, "How can you do these things in My Name?" Will those he helped kill stand before him as he is judged? Will he be forced to watch a recount of each of them dying? Or will he stand alone, face to face, just him and God?
I take little satisfaction in the idea of him burning in Hell. But I do take satisfaction at the idea of seeing him weep with remorse as he realizes the pain and suffering and indignity he effected in false cause. It is perhaps not that different than what we will all face, in our turn. I expect God to be merciful. So, too, tonight, does Osama bin Laden.
