How Osama Bin Laden Changed Us…

Just as Hitler had an impact, so did Bin Laden….

I’m very glad he’s gone.

My biggest regret is how we let him change us.

Some of that is due to the fact that George W Bush was President when 9/11 happened.  His cowboy mentality put us on the road to a police state and changed both the way the U.S. government operated and how it was perceived…..

He used our fear to drive political goals…

I’ll never forget how everyone in the world was an American on Sept 12th, 2001.  And how belligerence and posturing destroyed that feeling of unity.

The way Bush handled the horror that Bin Laden unleashed blew our chances at unity as a country and with the rest of the world…

I just wish we, as a Nation, could have faced the challenges driven by Osama Bin Laden’s hate and horror with a little more intelligence and a little less fear-driven bravado…

We could have built a better country and a better world…

I’m afraid, in some ways, Bin Laden ultimately won.

In many ways, he made us change into something less than what we were before September 11, 2001….

Maybe with his death we can put aside the fear and start to look at the world with hope and unity again.

Maybe now we can start to remember what it used to mean to be an American- to be against hate and torture and for equality and justice.

I hope so….

But I’m not optimistic…

From the Kansas City Star:

Without him, there would probably be no Department of Homeland Security, no Patriot Act, no Qur’an-burning pastors.

Had Osama bin Laden never been born, there would surely be fewer memorials to slain firefighters, less need for prosthetic limbs for young troops, an American public still largely ignorant of the Muslim notion of martyrdom.

Our military probably would still be more interested in tanks and aircraft carriers, less wary of roadside bombs and suicide belts. The development of killer robot planes might not have come so far. The need to deal with asymmetric threats — battling an army not of battalions but of insurgents — would not be so pressing.

And America would certainly be a country with far fewer long-fading yellow ribbons.

The man who came to symbolize a bloody rejection of all things U.S. left a legacy among those he hated, and those he inspired to hate them. Little wonder that his demise brought so little sympathy.

“In the past few years, (bin Laden’s) main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey,” wrote pundit Christopher Hitchens on news of bin Laden’s death and dumping at sea. “Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

In ways small and monumental, bin Laden’s two decades on the world stage changed how America operated within its borders and with other nations. It may not have been entirely his doing, but his life had a profound impact on the nation he so loathed.

via Osama bin Laden changed us in ways minute, monumental – KansasCity.com.