I slept through the news last night. I didn’t find out until I got up at 4:30am. My first emotion about it was something close to closure. 

Then I read the news and I saw the pictures of celebrations and I read through jbowes’ tumblr and what I saw mostly horrified me.

This isn’t an NBA championship. We didn’t win anything. Yet, there are people gathering by the hundreds if not thousands, waving flags, holding up hastily drawn signs and chanting “USA! USA!”

We didn’t win anything.

We lost almost 3,000 people on 9/11. We’ve lost over 5,000 soldiers in the wars that followed - and are still being fought - in both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

We didn’t win anything.

In my mind, this should be a quiet, somber occasion, one where we reflect on what this man took from us with terrorism and what he took from us in the ten years after. I’m not saying anyone is wrong for feeling joy over his death. But I will put myself out there and say that running around with a flag draped around you shouting “USA! USA!” is not really a dignified reaction. In fact, this sort of thing? It’s pretty ugly.

I can’t tell you exactly what about it is making my stomach churn or making me shake my head in disbelief. Maybe it’s the fact that ten years and 8,000 deaths later, the celebration in honor of the death of the man who was the catapult to those deaths should be somewhat muted, and not an explosion of jingoism.

I knew people who died on September 11, 2001. I went to funerals and memorial services. Still, I can’t find it in me to feel joyous about any of this. I can’t bring myself to raise a fist in the year and shout “Fuck yea, America!” I can’t bring myself to high-five anyone. I can thank the soldiers that worked hard to capture the man responsible for so much terror and death. I can feel a small sense of closure. But not an ending. Not a finality. And certainly, I can not feel a need to celebrate any of it.

We did not win anything. This is not a game. This is not a sport. This is not a championship. We’ve lost too much to ever, ever feel like we came out winners, to ever feel like victory is ours.

We did not win.

Osama bin Laden is finally dead.

But we did not win a damn thing.