Osama Bin Laden dead, officials say

well darnit, it is a good quote and why not give credit where credit is due:

Jessica Dovey, a 24-year old Penn State graduate who now teaches English to middle schoolers in Kobe, Japan, penned it.

well darnit, it is a good quote and why not give credit where credit is due:

Jessica Dovey, a 24-year old Penn State graduate who now teaches English to middle schoolers in Kobe, Japan, penned it.

Well, she penned the first part: "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."

The rest was Martin Luther King, Jr.:  "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

People celebrated in the streets after the end of WWII.  I think people are just caught up in the moment.

As for being worried about more attacks.  Where do we draw the line?  Don't publish that cartoon, it will cause terrorist attacks.  Don't air that episode of South Park.  The sun came up.

If they had taken him alive it would be the same threat, only added with the possibility of a jailbreak.

I agree, bookgrl

For me, I'm glad he's gone.  Period.   

Another perspective:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=715291

To be fair as well, it has been the same video of the same 10 frat guys chanting USA over and over.  The rest seem to be people out singing and quite a few putting memorials at various 9/11 locations.

For the frat boys/college students, most of the young are always impetuous, shall we say (or perhaps drunk more realistically).  If they are seniors, then they were 12 or so on 9/11.  Able to remember a "normal" life before 9/11, but this would have been the major factor in their lives.  Followed by relatives and friends joining up to fight. 

If they are freshman, unlikely due to the drinking of course, then do they even have any strong memories before 9/11?  Of course, they will remember things at 8, but they wouldn't have that much.

Now we get a couple of weeks where pundits pick everything to pieces. I found this gem on BBC news:

"I suspect there will be more worry about this in Britain nd Europe than in the US. That doesn't mean we are right or wrong. It is a cultural difference. We are less comfortable about frontier justice, less forgiving about even police shooting people who turn out to be unarmed, perhaps less inculcated with the Dirty Harry message that arresting villains is for wimps, and real justice grows from the barrel of a gun. Many in America won't be in the slightest bit bothered that a mass murderer got what was coming to him swiftly, whether he was trying to kill any one in that instant or not."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2011/05/the_white_house_has_had.html

Re: memories of 9/11, they have faded for the college/university students of today. I teach courses/modules that overlap the study of terrorism. Years ago I asked students what they remembered of 9/11; more recently the responses have been to the effect that they were in school and they only heard about it after they got home (or teachers pulled in tvs to show in classroom, but that was more frequent for high school than middle or elementary school).

To repeat, it was mostly college kids doing the celebrating, at least initially. The students weren't just frat boys; nor were they drunk (perhaps with a couple of exceptions). I teach at a university here, but have connections (faculty and student) in the States. I had former students celebrate at the White House. And current faculty in the DC area posted re: their students' activities. The announcement took place on a Sunday night while students were studying for finals that began on Monday morning at American University and GW in DC. And finals begin at Georgetown later this week.  

This is a very wired generation; they keep in touch with each other constantly by text and other means. Once they realized what happened, they began to congregate and celebrate. If you look for it, you will see this happened at college campuses across the country; look for videos of Penn State, Ohio State, Iowa State, Boston College, Dickinson, U/Delaware, Appalachian State, UMd/College Park. Probably many more.

Those same kind of events also took place in Washington and New York, with the local area university students heading to the White House and Ground Zero (respectively). There have been multiple articles published about the college student celebratory response to the announcement of UBL's death, including in the Washington Post, University websites (sample here: http://auambassadors.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/american-university-students-celebrate/ [nofollow] ), Slate (which described the crowd outside the White House as mostly college/university students), etc.

There will probably be more reflections in the days and weeks ahead about why they celebrated that way. They are trying to understand it themselves; see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/why-we-millennials-celebrated-when-osama-died/2011/03/03/AFx9TMcF_blog.html [nofollow]

I'm sure they were plenty of other celebrations of college age students. 

I was just commenting on the few shots that seem to shown over and over again on BBC and SKY News.  It was the same guys in a small circle I would say late college age looking frat boy-esque. 

And because those were shots were shown on a loop I think it made the whole thing appear to just those guys. 

Another perspective:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=715291

Some of their comments made me laugh.

I'm not sure about this. Have they produced the death certificate?

Some of their comments made me laugh.

yes I got a kick out them too

I have two military friends who have (sadly) had to be responsible for the deaths of people because of their participation in this war.  I know neither of them would feel proud, want credit, or enjoy seeing anyone celebrating a murder...regardless of how righteous or justifiable it may seem to some.  Maybe this "incite" (for lack of a better term) is what makes me not like the whole "Yay, he's dead!".  I'd hate to have to bear the weight of any soldier who has actually had to kill someone.

Am I glad he's dead...yes...and I feel a little guilty for that.

My favourite comment on a British website was "it is possible to take a bin out on a bank holiday weekend".