Now what?

“Osama Bin Laden is dead?”

A said this last night, reading a text message his sister sent him. He stared at the phone, then at me, incredulous.

“Well, let’s put on the news.” I said, half-way over to the remote.

CNN comes on, and the anchors/reporters/pundits are confirming what A said.

I struggled last night as I learned the news of Osama Bin Laden's death. I struggled with my own emotions. I wasn't happy. I wasn't relieved. Is this news good? How do Americans define justice? How do I define justice? How do these definitions differ?

Bin Laden's relevance--or irrelevance--plagued me throughout the night. The excerpt from a blog I read, below, helped me put my thoughts into words.

While it's necessary to stop terrorists, sometimes with violence, it is barbarous to gloat over the execution of an enemy. I find the chanting crowds cheering over the corpse disturbing, and the triumphal tone of our leaders is misplaced. We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and threw away trillions of dollars, and our trophy is the bloody corpse of one old man? There's no victory in that.

I'm also cynical. What was the point? Nothing will change...One figurehead is dead, now the focus of our country's fear will shift to some amorphous mass of generic Muslims,...we'll still flag our cowardice with pointless color changes at our airports, and we'll continue to sacrifice our civil liberties at the altar of national security. Nothing was accomplished, our purpose is as vague and tyrannical as ever, we'll need to continue to kill more to feed our illusion of safety.

Oh, there is one thing we've got now. A few more politicians will cloak themselves in the blood of our enemies in the next election, and victory will be achieved for Blowing Shit Up in the name of Getting Things Done. And we'll perpetuate the violence...

(From http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/osama_bin_laden_dead.php)

I fail to see how one person's death helps rectify/justify the deaths of 3,000 people, as the reporters/pundits/talking-heads I couldn't avoid last night would have me believe.

In that same vein, what about the troops that died while trying to find him (or whatever) we were/are doing abroad in our two (visible) occupations? This  makes me feel even more strongly than ever my friends who died in Iraq died in vain.

If it is the case that Osama Bin Laden's death is worthy of celebration, then I expect many people would be elated if former President Bush or current President Obama are killed and that the cheering of these hypothetical deaths would be tolerated/accepted.

These men indirectly have caused the deaths of countless civilians, which is exactly what bin Laden was guilty of.

Or do those civilians not count, because they are from Afghanistan or Iraq?