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Osama bin Laden is dead

For those just tuning into the Internet, Osama bin Laden is dead. The news leaked on Twitter while everyone waited for a last-minute announcement from President Obama. A tweet from Keith Urbahn was the first reliable source to give an idea for the topic.

So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn. He followed this by “Don’t know if its true, but let’s pray it is.” (Source) Good to know he realized how much power that tweet had, but by then all of Twitter had picked up on it, and 10:30 came and went without a word from Obama.

And then Twitter exploded in hilarity. If someone asks where I was when I found out Osama was dead, I’ll tell them I was drowning in Twitter hilarity. More retweets showed up on my feed than regular tweets from people I follow, and the laughs kept coming in. They’re still coming in. Times like this and the couple of people who accidentally livetweeted the attack are why the Library of Congress is archiving tweets.

Obama finally made his statement over an hour past the 11:30 scheduled time, and from what the Internet said, he wrote it himself. He should do it more often if that’s the case; I enjoyed this speech more than any other speech of his, and the first time I heard him speak was in 2007 (and that one was in person). The most notable quote from the speech:

“[T]he United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.”

Thank you for saying that, Mr. President.

There’s only one thing I can’t get behind, and that’s celebrating his death. I’m not a fan of celebrating anyone’s death, even someone who did deeds like the ones bin Laden did. Death is an end of life and existence, and using death before capturing bin Laden and making him stand a trial at the very least is wrong in my eyes. The end of a regime is to be celebrated, and rightly so.

Things won’t change immediately, if they ever change. You’ll still have to choose the pornoscanner or the grope if you travel through an American airport tomorrow and likely will for a long time. There’s still concern for a possible attack. And of course, those who have lost someone through bin Laden’s actions, directly or indirectly, will still feel the pain of the loss but may feel some relief at his death. Change is slow to come, and all we can do is do our part to create a better tomorrow.

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