Osamabama

Okay, not entirely sure how to feel about this whole Osamabama business.  On one level it certainly helps Obama for the 2012 election, but are we really celebrating someone's death?  Are we really holding up murder as an act of justice?  I heard a US Senator say that on NPR this morning.  "This is justice for the victims of 9/11."  So what exactly is justice for all the people we have killed or bombed in Iraq and Afghanastan?  Should they take out our figure head, Charlie Sheen (jokes!).  I mean Obama. 

How exactly does our behavior make us different than a terrorist or vigilante?  When was it exactly that we had a moment of reflection about our role in the rest of the world's perspective of America?  We were one step away from standing in the street holding up our guns and shooting them into the air last night.  For us, it was just cell phones and American flags.

The US doesn't negotiate with terrorists, as Tropic Thunder reminds us.  So would we negotiate with ourselves?  Because we have certainly reigned down terror on a few too many countries (shock and awe anyone?). 

I recognize that I really have no concept of running a country.  Nor have I ever been directly confronted with Spock's epic statement, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."  But I do know that I want to be proud to call myself an American.  That assassination is not a celebration, and that justice is not death, but choosing to uphold due process, evaluate the complexity of the story, to be guided by truth reason and fairness.  To recognize that villainy is often a question of perspective.

Otherwise how in the world are we going to make sure that our future ends up being like Star Trek.  Don't we all want that?  The Federation doesn't just run around shooting people.  Just saying.