Still a dangerous world, but now it is a better one

I am not smart enough to know if the world is now safer than it was on Sunday.

I do remember how I felt that cloudless blue morning as I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center while the other building burned beside it from the first impact. I remember the next two days of shell-shocked horror as more and more news rolled-on trying to decipher what had happened. I remember hearing the first plane fly over Columbia days later as I sat at the Statehouse, and I shuddered. I remember wanting payment exacted for the attack on my innocent American brothers and sisters of all races and creeds.

It has been a long ten years. During that time my own religious faith has grown, still I am not very conflicted by the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. I am relieved. Maybe I should be conflicted, but I still have a deep-down feeling that his end was better than he deserved.

I do believe in the afterlife, and those who kill unsuspecting children and women and men (i.e. evil cowards) and corrupt others to do the same, have an especially gruesome torment when they are gone. Bin Laden spent at least the last two decades as the cowardly killer of innocent people around the globe.

He is dead. Long live peace and respect for human life, and may America continue to prosecute those who endanger the world’s safety vigorously forever.