Mission Accomplished

It didn't take Chuck Norris, but heaven knows it probably wouldn't have taken a decade if he had been involved. Our long national nightmare is now at an end. My niece wrote me just moments after the announcement: "I'm rarely this jazzed to be an American, but..." And I knew exactly what she meant. We got the bad guy. We got him and killed him and we kept the body because we know that Donald Trump needs that kind of proof.
I confess that the "Wanted: Dead Or Alive" part of the post 9/11 America made me nervous, but I could never escape what had become a very personal vendetta against one man. Why should it be so personal? My usual liberal bias had a hard time absorbing this, and it was diminished by our subsequent invasion of Iraq. What was that about? Was I really going to be satisfied by the death of any old Middle Eastern crazy man?
Nope. Not really. It was a way to get at an itch that George the First hadn't quite finished scratching. It was like when James Bond takes out Oddjob at Fort Knox. Satisfying, sure, but it's not Goldfinger. We won't be happy until the big bad guy gets it. It was April 30, 1945, when Allied forces moved ever closer to capturing him that Adolph Hitler shot himself in the head. Sixty-six years later America managed to get there first. They got the bad guy and killed him. The guy that sent planes to crash into skyscrapers full of men and women, the guy who has been gloating about it ever since, Public Enemy number one, is no more. And as cathartic a moment as we've had since September 11, 2001 erupted. Better than beating the Russians at hockey in 1980. Better than passing a national health care bill. Better than a Super Bowl. Better than a Coke and a smile. Yes we can. Yes we did. Aloha, Osama.