Part 2: celebratingl

A friend’s Facebook post led me to a blog about the celebrating that followed the news of Osama’s killing. It was a good post with interesting references and reactions, I agreed with some, didn't with some. The writer was likening the celebrations to rioting in Boston after the Red Sox won the World Series some years ago. He cited a story by an NYC reporter who went to the WTC site to find scores of young people, he made it seem like all the people were college students and no doubt a majority were. The writer pointed out that these people were only 10 or 11 years old when the WTC attacks happened, and how much could they really grasp – yes, they were that young when the attacks happened, but they have lived with it ever since, and with the war(s) that have followed 9/11. They do have a grasp on the significance, since some of their family, friends, their generation are fighting those wars. And, being young and college students, most of them will celebrate anything. C’mon – even though you didn’t join the ‘rioting’ with the Red Sox win please don’t tell me you’ve never done a ‘wooo’ or the equivalent about something. Yes, I agree some of the participants were overboard. Yes, perhaps the WTC site should be considered above such actions, but to some, what better place? I would have preferred to go to the side street across from the site, laid my hand on the heart-breakingly touching brass plaque that commemorates the fallen firemen, police and emergency workers and told them that they have, in a way and to some extent, been avenged. Rather than a mob drinking and dancing, I prefer to have the image of the photo of firemen on their ladder truck, one with his arms raised in a victory pose, looking at the NYC building with the scrolling headline “Osama bin Ladin is dead” as my own mark of the event. But if theirs is waving a flag, or raising a beer – that is, after all, what America is about, the freedom to do things like this as we wish. That’s why we eliminated one symbol of a vastly different way of life.