Watching history?

So, unless you're asleep or under a rock right now, you've heard the news about Osama bin Laden. Someone on MSNBC just said that "this marks the end of something, marks the end of ... an important period for the nation." My first reaction is clearly heresy at this moment but: the end of what? Do we know why we're cheering? What do we think was accomplished tonight? And did we learn anything at all from these last 9-1/2 years?

We won't know for a while yet what effect bin Laden's death will have on terrorism around the world. It would truly be a gift if his absence caused the al Qaeda networks' acts of senseless killing to stop. But I am afraid that we remain as unreflective as ever about the context within which those acts are taking place, and the changes we've allowed in ourselves since September 11th.

Will we actually seek to understand the social, economic or environmental drivers that caused bin Laden's message to be so attractive to so many, and will we do anything about those issues? Will we stop using "security" as an excuse to destroy our own civil liberties and civic life, to say nothing of how we treat those who are not American citizens? Will we examine our prejudices toward Muslims, the Middle East, and non-white immigrants that we allowed to persist and intensify throughout this period? Will we confront our own nation's role as an agent of violence and injustice around the world?

As I listen to flashmobs cheering outside the White House, my heart has become incredibly heavy, because we are so busy rallying that we cannot ask ourselves what this should mean to us. Much like the national mood after September 11th, I fear that we'll be whipped into a false sense of unity that cuts off any opportunity to think about who we want to be following this event. We will cheer our military might and congratulate ourselves for the path that got us here, without ever wondering about the assumptions that underlie how we act on our own soil and abroad.

We are overflowing with a frenzy of gleeful hate because we killed the scapegoat on whom we'd placed all the blame for our decade of deep fearfulness. Yes, Osama bin Laden bore significant responsibility for the September 11th attacks; but the story of what happened to us that day - and certainly the story of what has gone on since - is much more complicated than that. It's hard for me to cheer, because I'm struggling to understand: did this moment really make us safer, or better?