COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: The sport of war

A bad man is dead — of that there is no doubt. But as I watched people outside of the White House fist bumping, climbing trees and hollering that the USA is No. 1, I was not overwhelmed with pride, joy or a sense of camaraderie. As a televised carnival unfolded before me, I was struck immediately by one emotion: disgust.
The embarrassing display of grave stomping spurred by Osama Bin Laden’s long-awaited demise stretched from Times Square to Pennsylvania Avenue, from CNN to NBC, from sea to shining sea. And it signifies to me that we have not won anything.
Is this really what we now celebrate? Is this really how we now celebrate?
In nearly 10 years since that awful September day, the attacks of 9/11 have taken a toll on our lives in many ways. Four-year-olds are intrusively patted down by TSA, a bankrupt federal government continues financing wars on credit, and politicians on both sides of the aisle pander to our collective bloodlust during their campaigns. All of this, however boldly you care to draw the line, can be traced back to that somber Tuesday morning.
More important than any of these ramifications, however, is the one aspect of which we continually lose sight: humanity.
Like most of us, I’m neither immune to nor naïve about the cost of war. On the afternoon of 9/11, a close friend of my brother’s guarded Air Force One when the president’s plane landed in my hometown of Omaha, Neb. He also took his own life a few years later to avoid being redeployed to Iraq.
The gratitude we have for the men and women who serve should be unending. They risk their lives doing something we’ve never had the willingness to do ourselves. We should not, however, be proud that we have to do any of this in the first place.
The fact that we are engaged in numerous battles with people who wish to eviscerate us from the planet exactly as passionately as we attempt to eviscerate them may be just that — a fact we sadly have to accept. But ringing the church bells and celebrating the Wicked Witch’s demise does not signify progress. When the avenue in front of our president’s home looks like an episode of “Jersey Shore,” it is readily apparent we have lost the grace that was once said to have set our country apart.
There’s a difference between defending oneself and gloating when a decisive blow has supposedly been struck. There’s a difference between the World Cup and a war that costs lives as often as we change channels. War and sports may both be relentlessly televised, talked about and promoted; they may both render us captivated, frustrated or obsessive; they may both allow television networks to sell outrageous amounts of advertising. But only one harkens back to the times we now describe as barbaric, when gladiators murdered each other in a coliseum for our entertainment. While I believe most of the revelers celebrating and social networkers updating statuses were expressing catharsis rather than malice, their actions and poorly chosen words speak much louder than their intent.
Be grateful the world became a safer place last week but understand that cutting the head off of this dragon does not slay it. Be proud to be an American whose right to free speech and tools for communicating that speech are envied throughout the world, but exercise that right with discretion. Be supportive of the individuals who bravely defend our lives but don’t confuse their noble efforts with the idea that war itself is admirable.
By celebrating death and destruction, even the most justifiable sort, we trivialize life. Growth. Prosperity. Progress. Humanity.
Again — this was a bad man. A man responsible for engineering the greatest atrocity ever realized in our country’s history. A man who stole lives and devastated families. A man who made the world a worse place. Still, it is vital that we remember to celebrate life, not death, no matter how vulgar the deceased may have been. Acting like we won the Super Bowl at his funeral does not highlight our differences; it emphatically underscores our similarities.