The Death of Bin Laden

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 World Trade Center

Bin Laden and his ideology have become irrelevant to what is happening in the Middle East and on the Arab Street. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden has not become irrelevant on Main Street right here.

My son-in-law woke up my daughter to tell her the news when it first came out. She cried on and off for the next few hours, finally falling asleep exhausted waiting for dawn to rise, a new dawn of a new day.

I believe I had written a post about her 9/11 experience. She was living in New York at the time between Central Park West and Columbus. She had had an appointment at the World Trade Center, but that morning she had overslept. She had other business on Long Island, so decided to go there.
When the train she was on came out of the tunnel on Long Island, pandemonium broke out on the train, as the passengers could suddenly see the WTC burning. At this time of the morning, it was not yet clear that airplanes were purposely being flown into the buildings.

Approach to Tunnel under the East River, NY

Her destination was far out on Long Island: an area not subdivided, developed, or studded with gentrified farm houses turned into big-footprint mansions. She had not brought a lot of money with her, and as the day wore on and as it the extent of the plot and the terror became clear, it was clear that she could not return to Manhattan that afternoon. Rooms could be gotten at motels for credit cards, but taxis do not use Visa.
 
She did not take her medicines with her on what was supposed to have been a few hours in the country; that was frightening.
It turned out that the cabby - after driving her all around looking for accommodations in rural Long Island - did not charge her. The driver said that he would never in his life forget the picture in his rear-view mirror of her trying to call people on her cell phone, and her crying for her friends.

My daughter has disliked flying since that time. She never used to have any qualms about hopping on an airplane and going, but that all changed.
There was a story this morning about the effect on young people. Many of them suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and nobody is aware of it... or we are aware of it, and we just try and do the best we can to carry on.
 (This is one reason why the financial and budgetary events of the recent times has drawn my particular ire: the fact that we keep bashing our citizens with one trauma after another. Sooner or later, there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. It is also why I avoid the News... I really cannot take too much of it anymore.)

So bin Laden still haunts our psyches, and will continue to do so until a number of generations have passed. My opinion on his death is that he has gone to his reward, whatever it is, and I am glad of it.
There are the usual conversations, pro and con, but none of it means anything to me. The only thing that matters is the picture of our loved ones... in the rear-view mirror... and the terrible distance that separates us at the time of our distress.

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