Thou Shall Not Kill

Obama and his team watch the raid live

This week, Osama Bin Laden was killed in a raid ordered by US President Barack Obama. Lots of people were happy about it. Some were angered by it and a whole lot of people had mixed emotions about it.  I fell into the mixed emotions group.

The killing of Bin Laden represents what happens when our values come in conflict with one another. Humanists understand that all ethics and all moral value systems are situational. But that doesn't mean it's easy thinking through moral problems.  It's hard sometimes.

Here's the moral dilemma that the killing of Bin Laden brought up. Is it OK to kill one person in order to save the lives of thousands?  For Obama and his team, the answer is apparently yes because that's the decision that was made. Intellectually I agree, but killing is still killing and the thought of someone dying makes me sad. Even if that someone was Bin Laden. While I don't like feeling this way, I would rather feel sad about a death then ambivalent about it. People who aren't emotionally moved by death scare me.

Anyway, Bin Laden's death has also brought up those horrid emotions from Sept 11th and how I felt when I watched the towers collapse on television and saw people jumping to their deaths to avoid immolation. So even though a part of me is relieved that Bin Laden can't order peoples death's anymore. The other part of me is still mourning the tragedy of Sept 11, 2001 and wishing that the world didn't include such sorrow.