"I believe that as people of God, we must answer evil. Sometimes that answer is prayer, sometimes that answer is force. Is killing ever justified? Possibly as an appropriate response to unfathomable evil." ~Karen Wells
Osama Bin Laden is dead.
It is good for our country. It was the right thing for our military to do. Hopefully, it is a giant step to the end of this long war.
But our military is still there. Men and women are still separated from their families. Innocent lives will continue to be lost. It's not over yet, and I'm left wondering what exactly comes next. It's not something that makes me feel like breaking out the bubbly.
Sobering is the word of the day.
I do find it incredibly sad that one the day after the most significant event in this war, that our country isn't standing together. That people are actually infusing inflammatory politics into what should be a battle won together.
Will nothing ever give us pause to just be Americans for one day? To just be united for even 24 hours?
If that is the case, then Bin Laden is still winning from his watery grave.
Monday, May 02, 2011
One nation united
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I don't entirely disagree with your sentiments, but isn't there a counter-argument to say that we're a nation where people can disagree fundamentally and argue about it -- and even quote scripture at each other from the same holy book, but used at cross purposes -- and yet, with very, very few exceptions we're not at each other's throats or declaring religious death sentences against each other or acting out in physical violence to quell the opinion of the other....and that THAT's exactly the kind of tolerance (even sometimes ill-tempered tolerance) that makes us the kind of hardy pluralistic nation that a narrow-viewed zealot like Osama bin Laden hated and feared? Maybe our ability to be in discord but not have it fly off into hypersectarianism and fatwas and purges and ethnic cleansing and the like is what makes us the nation that we are, even if we don't stand together in visible ways all that often.
ReplyDeleteOkay, there was a monster run-on sentence in there. Maybe I should have coffee before I write.
As always, Marty, I appreciate your thoughtfulness!
Lain, you always get me thinking even deeper. Thank you for that.
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