The extraordinary breaking news of the death of Osama Bin Laden eclipses anything else I might have wanted to talk about. The death of that one individual in a two story house in Abbotabad Pakistan, 30 miles from Islamabad will have political and probably military ramifications for many years to some.
I understand why folk are reacting as they have and would not criticise them for doing so, but my first thought is that no matter what he did or inspired to be done in bringing about the deaths of many people, it remains a disconcerting thought that there are celebrations over the death of another human being, brought about, in this case, by a state of which he was not a national or within whose borders he was not living or had ever lived.
There is for many the possibility of a sense of closure for many, and a feeling that “justice has been done” and these are good things. But as many have said, whilst this is a symbolic moment it does not symbolise the end of the “war on terror”. In fact, over the next few months we need to be even more vigilant.
The death of Osama Bin Laden does not make the world a more secure place. That will only come about when the relationships between East and West have been healed and that is a far longer journey, one that will require a very different kind of communication and conversation, a journey where the travellers need not only to understand the others on the journey but to better understand themselves as well. This has to be a journey that begins with a sense of our common humanity, rather than our differences or who is more powerful or even who is “right” or “wrong” about what the nature and purpose of the human condition. That’s is a journey for which that last nights events are no more than one step and maybe not even that.
