‘Twas a scene serene last Sunday eve, especially at our house. DefCon Zero. Wife and I contentedly closing out a busy weekend toddling. Even little Atticus went down without incident. Win, Win, Win. The height of drama? 60 Minutes. I’m older than I think.

Halfway in, likely over a Flomax ad, the house phone unexpectedly rings – that’s rare. Only immediate family has the number, and they all know better than to dial it when a high degree of probability says a certain baby boy may be slumbering nearby. “Cell baby cell!” I’ll politely remind them. Tomorrow. When I retrieve the message. For now, they can wait. Let freedom ring.

Few seconds pass, resuming telepharma fogey hour programming. A text message enlightens my Mephone. Connected? … Probably nothing. It’s Sunday us time, check it later. Let go, be present.

Pause. Relax. My phone abruptly lurches in urgent vibration. And my heart starts to race. Something going on? Then another text pops up all expectant, followed immediately by another. Best dial in stat. Tap-tap. Another!  Battle stations. Cell now pounding in vibrastic seizure, staccato text volleys sparkling for attention. Status? All right. Concerned. Something is definitely up. Pleading please please please, don’t be bad.

Spot check. Idoya? Ten-hut by my side. Little one? Monitor read – positive ID, sleeping peacefully. Principals copacetic. Continue. Basset hound Humphrey lain out unresponsive on floor. Standard. All key hands and paws accounted for and secure. Probably little different from any other young, young, parent.

Not Dad. That was the party I feared for the first time these alerts went viral. And Jesus, don’t let it be my sister either, don’t think I could handle that, having gotten this far. Agreed? These are my demands. Wallens family circle of trust remains intact, and we’re good. Remember, you owe us one. Bargain.

First text to turn my insides out is from a mythically mirthy Irish buddy stationed in London, phew. Relief. His headline opens by calling me “Brother.” Which could mean he’s especially mirthy, or that something wicked this way comes. Quickly, what friends do we share? Few. Proceed.

London goes on to “Offer condolences.” Standby, hold please. What is going on here? And why wasn’t I notified?

Second text hails Mary fulla grace – it’s from my sister. Thank God. But by my frenzied calculus, this could also be bad, for if it’s Nicole, then this alleged happening, whatever it may be, has officially degenerated into something personal.

All of this races through my mind at synaptic speed, faster than eye can read.
But a while later, tunnel vision catches up, I read her words, and my knees get shaky. “OMG – TURN TO CNN”.

Shheeyyiiii… I guess it’s on. Again… Well, can’t possibly be worse than the last time. Deep breath, 1, 2, 3… Maintain control. Check for intel, dive in, survey situation. Here it is, banner headline. “Osama bin Laden Killed by US Special Forces.” Clear!

And Atticus slept sweetly through it all.

How long’d it take to read this far? Two, three minutes? Took 10 seconds to happen. Nine and three-quarters years to write. Just my personal smartphone era strain of post-traumatic stress, induced by 24-hour breaking news cycle. Many of us share this affliction. I come by my case personally. The big one.

My brother Blake was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, North Tower, 105th floor, Cantor Fitzgerald, you know the rest. Dashing titans of high finance, among the unlikeliest victims, whose targeting started the global conflagration. Instantly immolated, slaughtered en masse, by millennialist jihadis, in the quantum leap salvo, that launched an endless war. So began our nation’s hunt.

Blake was my closest friend, confidante, supporter. I stood as best man at his wedding; he was conscripted to serve as same in mine. Blake led from the front. Two years my elder, he was wiser than that. I trailed Blake’s legend through high school, and followed his star to college. He was blessed with a graceful irrepress not even a stilted New Yorker could resist. Smart, charming, handsome, connected. How he loved children, and they adored him. But Blake was himself no child of privilege. He displayed elegant intensity. One friend labeled Blake “Five-Star Supernova”. And it stuck. Blake avidly spread his contagious passion for the art of living; one revered motto urging concisely, “Think Story.” He coupled a prodigious ability to forge sacred friendships with a genuinely inquisitive, highly tuned mind.

Since the evildoers’ objective was to strike at the heart of American industry, Blake and his winsome cohort on Wall Street were most assuredly it. Blake had no truck with zealots. But ya’ try not to take it personal. Mortally wrong place, historically wrong time. Last lottery anybody oughta aspire to. And my closest ally protector was caught up in it. With a worldwide blast, witnessed by billions, his 30-year soaring success story turned into a short-lived tragedy.

Aftermath. Morning after, worst part? The dull blade gnawing curiosity. What were Blake’s last thoughts? What fear and bewilderment Blake scrambled to understand in his final moments. He died alone, scared, and no doubt reproaching himself for his lovely wife Raina. At the fix he found himself, and the break he’d leave her with.

In Los Angeles, Sept. 11 is regarded with just slightly greater awe than a box office blockbuster. Here, people’s perceptions of the world around us and events within it seem to spring less from perspective reality than from our ancestral love of movies. Where you better believe it, we absolutely always get our man. Or simply re-shoot the ending. So in the sensory deprivation chamber that is L.A., I, we, tend to feel a bit alone with this pain.

Had I one regret above all else about that dark day, strangely it’s that I had turned down a job offer that would’ve put me right there in the middle of it. Cantor offered me a few years prior; Blake even sweetened the deal by insisting he’d buy me the apartment next door.

But for the first time, I declined to follow, inexplicably, regrettably. I sorely wanted to be in that building that morning, to sacrifice my life to be by my brother’s side. But it wouldn’t have been fair to Dad.

We have all by now genuflected, then lamented, the non-partisanship that flowered in the days following Sept. 11. The circumstantial cohesion briefly flickered then died. People everywhere tried to help a brother out. To perform that eminently American miracle, turning defeat into a happy ending, by the third reel.

Those were the days, weeks, months when survivors each struggled to find peace, closure. But the attacks left most Americans enraged, violated. Not so much sad or heartbroken. And bin Laden’s deft evasion left us feeling outsmarted and impotent.

The years of fruitless search for the cave-dwelling megalomaniac who composed it all left Americans with a shared feeling of resignation.  Even cheerleader and “Chief Bringemon” George W. Bush conceded like some hapless breakup victim that Osama bin Laden was no longer even on his radar. He’d, uh, moved on.

So how do I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden? Less than you’d think, but more than I’d have thought. What’s a guy to do?  Summon all the family to a sentimentalist revival, cause our soldiers killed a guy? I don’t think so. We’ve come a long way back, and not on account of no figurehead. It’s not as if we were waiting baited all this time for bin Laden’s guts on a slab. We weren’t. The wish was incidental to the loss.

Like others who lost loved ones that dreadful day, I remain sad. No surprise there. But a couple of thoughts may surprise you. Angry?  A little, but again, less than you’d think. The hatred, avenger’s zeal? All pale next to that excruciating sad. The loss fractured my world, and those of unimaginably many others. Why, just think of the dimensions of your social network – how many Facebook friends ya’ got? Now multiply by 3,000. That’s about how many lives were similarly affected.

Make no mistake, I’m glad this murderous scourge has been surgically extracted from the human race. I’m glad he was discovered in a mansion. I relish how that fact exposes the fraud that he was. Bin Laden stridently cultivated an image of voluntary sacrifice. That this privileged scion of means chose to suffer in squalor side-by-side with his brothers. He didn’t; he was a fraud. The man was neither of his people, by them, nor for anyone else’s agenda but his own vainglory. Paid for with their death. Even his misguided followers must now concede that.

Alright, truth be told, yah, I’m glad the last thing bin Laden ever laid eyes on was the barrel end of elite American enforcement. To have known Blake and me was to know that two of our close friends serve in the Special Forces. We always shared great admiration for the code they live by, the excellence they pursue, the stories they share, the lives they sacrifice, for people they’ll never meet, who will never know their names. Honor.

When asked if I get “closure” from bin Laden’s demise, I struggle to answer so succinctly. “No,” I answer, “I hoped they’d send bin Laden’s bulleted carcass on a coast-to-coast decomposition tour. I could see his soulless body paraded around like it’s Weekend at Bernie’s.” Good thing cooler heads prevailed; I wouldn’t have been as respectful as the commander-in-chief.

Among those of us whose loss that day was final, we do not derive much “closure” from this development, because for us the closest thing to closure we ever got was a funeral. There is no moving on for us. Blake is still gone. We will never again meet, hug, laugh, cry, confide. My child will never meet his hero Uncle Blake.

The whole issue of closure means everything to others and trivia to us. To those who were stung by the attacks, but not necessarily struck by it, bin Laden’s death finally gives them their pride of settlement, of control, of eye-for-eye justice. Even Jesus be cool with that.

Well we the people, we got our man. We retook control and showed ‘em who’s boss.  I suppose that passes for “closure.” ‘Twas the one thing we all ever really wanted, and the only thing I’ll never ever get.

Jordan Wallens is author of Gridchronic. He works for an investment firm and lives in Los Feliz with his wife Idoya, son Atticus and basset hound Humphrey.

*Photo courtesy of Jordan Wallens.

The post Death by Seal appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In Japan, in the early Kamakura period – year 1185, to be precise – a beloved general named Yoshitsune fell out of favor with his brother, Emperor Yoritomo, and became a hunted man. Fleeing for his life, Yoshitsune travelled about the country in disguise, often finding protection with admirers. The emperor set off a national manhunt for Yoshitsune, a Tora-Bora-like undertaking in a country that is three-quarters mountainous. By 1189, Yoshitsune was dead. The pursuit, in a time of few mobile phones, had taken four years.

As no one needs to be told, the United States took 10 years to track down and eliminate Osama bin Laden. We also spent a lot more money on the effort than Emperor Yoritomo did to find his brother, even adjusting for inflation. (Bags of rice bought a lot more back then.) The professionals who nabbed bin Laden may have been very competent, but they were apparently also dealing with many colleagues who were not very competent. Imagining what discussions about Osama would have been like inside the CIA, former CIA field officer Robert Baer wrote in Time, “Every time a junior analyst suggested the al-Qaeda was hiding in Pakistan proper – perhaps in a military cantonment area like the one in which he was killed – an old hand would have jumped in telling him that was too far-fetched to even discuss.”

But my point isn’t to scold my country for slowness. Screw-ups happen. Things are harder than they look. No, what bothers me is what our celebration of all this okay-ness – as if we’ve quashed a worthy foe rather than a malignant pipsqueak – says about where we are as a nation. It suggests an overwhelming fear of impotence and decline, one that causes us to overplay achievements we once would have taken for granted. “We are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to,” Obama said in his remarks last night. “That is the story of our history.” Well, okay, our nation of 300 million set its mind to tracking down an evil man – and we got that man. But surely greatness calls for more than that.

This self-congratulatory habit of mind has been around for a while now, at least since the Reagan era. When the United States bombed Libya in 1986, celebrations in the country were widespread, with t-shirts for sale saying things like “USA: 1, Libya: 0.” (I well remember the excitement of my classmates in elementary school.) After Gulf War I, we held victory parades. Let me be clear: I feel immense gratitude to the United States military, and I’d like to see our troops get increased pay, more manageable deployments, superior equipment, and better medical care. But not everything calls for cavalcades.

We weren’t always this way. We took to the streets to celebrate the end of the Second World War, but that was after victories in Europe and Japan. Our troops were coming home. The death of Hitler, by contrast, garnered only a muted reaction. “Reports of Adolf Hitler’s death, like the weather yesterday, left New Yorkers cold,” reported The New York Times in May 1945. “They stopped only briefly in the chill rain of the evening rush hour to glance at headlines, to shrug in disbelief, before they dived like moles into the subway.”

Now, I won’t deny that I was, despite my pains, partly moved by the crowds in the streets last night. In a balkanized era, Americans rarely come together for anything, particularly their country. I doubt any other group of people in the world felt our relief as acutely as we felt it last night. But we haven’t won a huge war. We’ve killed a vicious criminal. I’m glad we did it. And we should glance at the headlines, shrug in disbelief, and dive into the subway.

T.A. Frank is ideas editor of Zócalo Public Square.

Photo courtesy of Ricky Justus.

The post Over-Joyed appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

There are plenty of reasons – both analytical and moral – to stifle euphoria at the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing. It is unlikely to make a material difference in the operational capabilities of the loose federation of terrorists operating under the al-Qaida banner. A death, no matter whose, is a dubious cause for celebration. Things could get dicey with Pakistan. Vengeance isn’t a healthy craving. Yadda yadda yadda.

And yet: that felt so good. Go with it, embrace the catharsis.

The killing of bin Laden is about more than justice in the clichéd sense of bringing closure to the families of victims of 9/11 (which it can’t really do). What Sunday night’s electrifying news delivered was a firm rebuttal to our collective sense of helplessness and impotence.

Yes we can – indeed.

In terms of the psychic dividend, the circumstances of bin Laden’s death are all-important. He didn’t die of natural causes in some cave, having eluded American forces till the end. He didn’t go down, serendipitously, in the crossfire of some routine operation. He wasn’t taken out by an anonymous drone. No, American military and intelligence forces painstakingly tracked down the terrorist. After discarding the safer alternative of bombing the compound, our commander-in-chief sent in special forces who managed to shoot Osama bin Laden in the face and haul away his body without taking a single casualty. Think about that. Some Navy Seal – a young man whose character might have been formed on a high school wrestling or football team in a place like Fresno or Toledo back in the halcyon days when we fretted about some futuristic Y2K bug instead of the bearded, medieval-seeming lunatic declaring jihad against America – took the one definitive shot. For all of us.

The United States has had a rough decade – millennium, actually. Think back to the exuberant days of 1999, when talk of American omnipotence was all the rage and our politics were consumed by the twin luxuries of obsessing over the president’s sex life and debating what was to be done with those mounting federal surpluses. Since that (admittedly illusory) high, we have botched a presidential election, mishandled the occupation of Iraq, practically lost a great American city to the avoidable ravages of a hurricane and its aftermath, discovered through the course of two gut-wrenching economic implosions just how rigged and corrupted our financial markets had become and mortgaged our future to foreign central banks. For all its obvious strengths, America, to the puzzlement of the rest of world, had also become the land of Enron, inadequate sea walls, hanging chads, Abu Ghraib and trillion-dollar deficits.

Worst of all, we couldn’t even get “that guy.” We do have bigger problems, but none more symbolic and tangible and maddening than the mastermind of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil getting away with it, unscathed.

Until now. It took a decade – longer, if you set the clock from the time he bombed our embassies in Africa – but the stark code words relayed from the special forces back to the White House provided the bookend to our national trauma: “Geronimo KIA.”

Bin Laden remained a protagonist in our collective consciousness long after the history of his own part of the world seemed to pass him by. The Arab Spring has unfolded, but al-Qaida and its worldview couldn’t have been more alien to the democratic protesters on Tahir Square and elsewhere in the Middle East. Bin Laden witnessed the history he’d long awaited – as an irrelevant bystander. And to the extent that al-Qaida does remain a viable force, it is led by a new generation of jihadists, for whom the old man may be more useful as martyr than he was in isolated retirement. There is indeed something pathetic about the superpower’s greatest nemesis being guarded by a handful of cronies.

The fact that it took so long to hunt down bin Laden, more than twice the time it took America to wage a global conflict that successfully extinguished the combined threat of Nazism and Japanese militarism, is a two-edged sword. Bin Laden’s endurance called into question our nation’s ingenuity, character, purpose, competence and stamina. Every breath he took represented a glaring asterisk to America’s self-image, and how others perceive us.

But the drawn-out time frame also suggests a counter-narrative that casts the United States in a much better light: a story of tenacity and patience. A decade is practically infinite in American politics and military history, and yet we stuck to it and stayed in Afghanistan until we found him. This is not a story we hear frequently: tenacity and patience are not traits usually associated with the United States. Al-Qaida, of course, operates on the lunatic fringes of tenacity and patience gone awry: It was surreal to see bin Laden back in the fall of 2001 celebrating his 9/11 success as payback for “the tragedy of Andalusia,” referring to the 1492 expulsion of Muslims from the Spanish peninsula. So the fact that it took so many years and so much hard work makes the catharsis that much sweeter, doesn’t it?

Let’s hope that this reminder of national unity and purpose (harkening back to the 9/12 mood) isn’t fleeting and can be channeled toward the daunting challenges that stand between us and the nation’s future greatness – the crushing national debt, economic competitiveness, inequality, and yes, the remains of bin Laden’s movement in a time of asymmetrical warfare, when a few crazies can wreak such havoc. A telling joke bridging the petty absurdity of contemporary politics and the momentousness of Sunday’s news was quick to light up the blogosphere: Did you hear that Donald Trump is insisting on seeing Osama bin Laden’s death certificate? Only time will tell if the courageous takedown of bin Laden will serve as a catalyst for a more serious, purposeful politics in Washington, or whether it will prove a short reprieve from our decline into a Trumpian abyss.

Our nation’s leaders from both parties owe it to the memory of those who perished on 9/11 and on the battlefields of Afghanistan in the last 10 years, and to the courage of those special forces who accomplished their mission on Sunday, to vindicate our celebratory feeling.

Yes we can, indeed.

Andrés Martinez is Editorial Director of Zócalo Public Square and Director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program at the New America Foundation.

*Photo courtesy of globovisión.

The post “Geronimo KIA” appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.