Let me get something off my chest

I will be back to blogging about the fun and wild time I had in Tejas with Mr. G shortly.  In the mean time, something has been bothering me since Sunday night.


My dear friend Lia also wrote about it.  As she is a wonderful and eloquent writer, feel free to skip this blog posting and head right over to her site for a better version of what I am talking about.


Bin Laden has been caught and killed.  By our US Military.  Nearly ten years of our military's hard work and perseverance has been paid off.  We should all be extremely happy and united that the world's most wanted terrorist is no longer a threat.  Our military personnel, though still working vigilantly to protect our great country from another attack, has been successful and should be proud.  There is some justice for those family members who lost loved ones due to the 9/11 attacks and for those who lost family members over seas to seek that justice.


But instead, our nation seems to be torn apart again.  Instead of uniting as one nation, we are once again pointing fingers.  Within seconds of the news about Bin Laden, I was hearing things such as "Oh god, Obama is just trying to get reelected.  Just what we need!"  "Why is Obama taking all of the credit for this? He needs to stop acting like he did anything about this."  "Maybe of Obama had focused on this instead of basketball, Bin Laden would have been captured years ago."  "Good, now he can focus on the deficit and our budget problems." "Obama doesn't even support our military."


Remember September 11th?  Of course you do.  Remember those feelings that everyone in our great nation had?  Fear, confusion, extreme sadness, anger.  Regardless of which of these emotions you experienced, as a nation, we were united in grief.  We were united in sadness.  We were united in patriotism and knew that we needed to join together to support one another.  To find the people responsible for this act.  We were Americans and we were joined together, differences or not, because of this attack against us.  Our President, Barack Obama, said it best on Sunday night--


‎"On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.”


But now, now that this monster has been caught and killed, instead of seeing our nation unite again, united in hope, in honoring those fallen, in supporting our President, we see blame.  We hear heckling.  We see an even deeper party divide.


I don't care what your politics are, or who you vote for.  You have your own opinions and I have mine.  But if capturing Bin Laden cannot unite us as Americans, if only grief and destruction can do that, then I am scared, fearful, hopeless and sad.


Please, be respectful.  This man is the President of our great country.  He is our leader.  Dislike him for this politics, but do not be disrespectful.  He just lead our country, our military, into one of our greatest accomplishments as a country.  Thousands of lives have been lost to get us to this point.  Respect those men and women.  Come together and be thankful.  Be thankful for those who gave their lives for us to see this moment.  Be thankful for our President, taking control and seeing this event come to head.  Be thankful that one more violent monster is no longer a threat.  Please, let us be united with our appreciation, our thankfulness, our respect.  


This is a victory.  A victory for our President.  A victory for our military.  A victory for Americans. Let this unite us.