Capas dos jornais de hoje nos EUA

A morte de Bin Laden está na primeira página dos jornais de praticamente todos os países do Mundo, especialmente dos norte-americanos. Usar o medo e espalhar o terror é inqualificável. Percebe-se a indignação. Percebe-se a dor. Percebe-se a condenação em uníssono dos que praticam este tipo de actos. Não se percebem, contudo, os excessos de certas capas e manchetes. Pela insensatez que representam. Por não perceberem o essencial: que destilar ódio e rejubilar em vingança não augura nada de bom para o Mundo. Só nos afasta da segurança que apregoamos desejar. Ostentar a morte à laia de orgulho nacional só atiça o ímpeto de retaliar. Provoca. Desafia. Para o pior. Para tudo aquilo que, ao limite, seria sempre de evitar. Olho os jornais, os americanos em  particular, e constato que amanheço hoje ainda menos tranquila e confiante do que ontem me deitei. No que leio e vejo descubro sinais de alarme impossíveis de ignorar. Deter Bin Laden impunha-se. Matá-lo seria sempre uma fatalidade. Sair à rua em hordas, tripudiando sobre o fim que lhe foi dado, porém, . A euforia dos americanos em festa e das primeiras páginas dos jornais combina  tanto de agressivo como de ingénuo. Morreu Bin Laden mas está por provar o desmantelamento da organização que liderava.  não acabou o terrorismo
O momento pedia outra sobriedade. Senão pelo terrorista, pelas vítimas que ele fez. Para que a mesma crueldade que os matou não se perpetuasse 'ad eternum', fazendo outras depois e além de si. Mereciam as vítimas nunca ver quem amavam e os chorou ser capaz de dançar sobre a desgraça dos cadáveres com a mesma alegria festiva com que os fiéis da Al-Qaeda um dia dançaram sobre os seus.

Um artigo para ler na revista Time, começa assim:

A major question lingers unanswered at the center of this story: Why was bin Laden killed? Michael Scherer has reported that the Navy Seals who landed at Osama bin Laden’s safehouse were not given orders specifically to kill, but were on a “kill or capture” mission. That implies they were prepared to accept bin Laden’s surrender. It didn’t work out that way. But despite earlier reports to the contrary, including from White House counter-terror adviser John Brennan, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that bin Laden was in fact unarmed. (“Resistance does not require a firearm,” he said) So, what happened?

Cf. também:

• White House backs off claims bin Laden was armed, used human shield
• The operation, blow by blow
• Obama mulls releasing photo of bin Laden’s body

A Mix of Emotion Stored for a Decade

by DAN BARRY
published: NY Times -  May 2, 2011

Finally, the sworn enemy of this American generation had been cornered and killed by our determined special forces over there, ending a decade-long hunt for the villain who had altered our way of life. Here, it seemed, was our moment to plant a celebratory kiss on a nurse or soldier in Times Square, to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.” until dawn — to see the faint outline of a better tomorrow. 
But the pent-up emotions released by the news of a successfully deadly firefight in Pakistan, some 6,900 miles from Manhattan, proved as complicated as these times. They ranged from jingoistic bursts of boast to halting expressions of dread; from joyous shouts for the strike of a winning goal to somber reflections about that dish best served cold, vengeance.
“Bittersweet,” is how Todd Polk, an Army major who has completed two tours in Afghanistan, described the news of Osama bin Laden’s demise. Speaking by telephone from the Army’s National Training Center, in Southern California, he said he was glad that the last thing Bin Laden saw “was an American face.”
A great day, no doubt. But, he added, the grind of war continues.
“It’s a morale boost,” Major Polk said, before beginning another day training soldiers for combat. “But it’s not V-E Day.”
Osama bin Laden had become Public Enemy No. 1 and Only, responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11 that killed more than 2,900 people and provided government justification for sending a million American soldiers to war. At the same time, he was just one man, a thin, bearded ascetic killed by a gunshot to the head and now buried at sea.
His death may represent exacted justice, but it does not provide resolution. No sense of war’s end; no sense that the hovering threat of terrorism will lift anytime soon.
In the first hours, at least, it did seem like another Victory in Europe Day in the offing, particularly in certain corners of New York City. Sunday night’s reports of Bin Laden’s death sent hundreds cheering into the streets that surround the World Trade Center site. That many of them were children when the towers fell may have explained some of their joy; the bad man who loomed over their formative years had been vanquished, and so they raised voices, flags and cans of beer.
By midmorning, though, the numbers and the enthusiasm had waned. No nurses and soldiers in photogenic embrace. Only Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s solemn words — “Yesterday, Osama bin Laden found out that America keeps its commitments” — and the announcement of an increased police presence in the city’s subways.
In other places around the country that figured prominently in the 9/11 narrative, there were fewer fist bumps and woo-hoo chants than thoughtful pauses to place the development in sobering context.
In Boston, at Logan International Airport, the ceaseless morning hustle for departure gates and exit doors continued, just as it did nearly a decade ago, when Bin Laden-directed hijackers boarded the two jetliners that they would crash into the twin towers. Travelers who stepped outside the hurrying scrum to consider Bin Laden’s death generally expressed a happiness tinged with trepidation.
Luis Jimenez, 53, had just returned from California after engaging in a rite of passage so familiar in American culture: visiting colleges with his daughter, Paola, a soccer-playing high school junior. Before continuing on to their home in Moultonborough, N.H., he said he felt shock, elation and relief at the news of Bin Laden’s death.
“I think justice has been done,” he said, though he added, “I do worry a little about what might happen next.”
In Shanksville, Pa., where a plane crashed in a field after some passengers and crew members thwarted the plans of its Bin Laden-directed hijackers to hit either the White House or the Capitol, visitors placed small tokens — flowers, small American flags and newspapers heralding Bin Laden’s death — along the chain-link fence of the temporary memorial marking the crash site.
Michael Barham, who described himself as a military veteran from Phoenix who had served in Afghanistan, said that he was in Pittsburgh for a trade show, but that he had driven to Shanksville with his father on Monday morning because “this was the place we had to be today.”
“I’m very glad to see him dead,” Mr. Barham said of Bin Laden. “My only wish is that I could have been the one to do it.”
And in Washington, D.C., not far from where Bin Laden-directed hijackers crashed a plane into the Pentagon, dozens gathered outside the White House late Sunday night to sing in praise of the United States. But by Monday morning, the singing had stopped, with small groups of tourists snapping photographs and enjoying the moment, while news photographers and television crews waited for signs of celebration worthy of recording. Any honking of cars in the nation’s capital signaled impatience, not celebration.
Here was Katie Russell, 25, rushing to work at the National Geographic Channel and calling the news “pretty awesome.” But here, too, was Chris Halley, 42, a labor union employee, allowing that justice had been served, but adding that nothing had been changed.
“There’s always going to be another cockroach popping up,” Mr. Halley said, offering an assessment sure to vex military officials who spent nearly half a generation looking for Bin Laden.
Indeed, in chilly, cloudy Dearborn, Mich., where a third of the nearly 100,000 residents are of Middle Eastern descent, there seemed to be little doubt that the protracted hunt for Bin Laden, capped by his death, was a good and just development.
Mohammed Al-Fulah, who moved to the United States from Iraq 27 years ago and now works in his family’s restaurant, took a break from his lunch on a park bench to say he found nothing unseemly in the sporadic public celebrations of Bin Laden’s death.
“Why not?” he asked, stretching out his arms. “The man was a blood murderer. Why shouldn’t everybody be happy? It is a good day. A very good day.”
Madiha Ridha, an Iraqi émigré who works at a Dearborn clothing store that caters to Arab-American women, agreed. “We thank God they catch him,” she said. “It has been a long time. We are very happy.
“What he did in New York we will never forget,” she added, shaking her head. “He is not a human being.”
But the chatter on Facebook and Twitter reflected a virtual back-and-forth conversation about the propriety of celebrating a man’s death — no matter that thousands of Americans were killed at his command.
“A lot of people are rejoicing about it on Facebook,” said Kirk Barron, 22, a student at Columbia College, in Chicago. “A lot of people don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about. All they know is that a bad guy is killed. It’s a form of patriotism. It’s like you’re rooting for your favorite sports team.”
Mr. Barron, who was in grammar school when Sept. 11 attacks took place, admitted that he was having a hard time trying to figure out how he felt about the killing of Bin Laden. “I’m pretty spiritual, so I don’t want to celebrate a person’s death,” he said. “He was a bad guy, so it’s good that he was stopped. Then, I question whether his supporters will retaliate.”
These were the themes that intrigued students in William Lamme’s history classes at Kelly High School, in Chicago. They wanted to know more about Bin Laden, more about Al Qaeda — more about distant events still shaping current events.
“The students wanted to know if this somehow represented an end to things — which in my opinion, unfortunately, it does not,” Mr. Lamme said. “The movement has become much bigger. We talked about how important this person’s death would be for a movement that has gotten so big. A lot of the students said that they thought it was symbolic and important.”
Meanwhile, in Knoxville, Tenn., a business manager named Donald Fitzgibbon, 40, spent part of Monday cleaning up the damage from last week’s violent storms, which had broken his office’s skylights, torn the siding off his house and ruined two of his cars.
At first Mr. Fitzgibbon was happy to hear that Bin Laden had been killed. He has a deeper interest than most in this development: Nearly two years ago, his son, Pvt. Patrick Fitzgibbon, 19 years old and a few months out of Army boot camp, stepped on a buried mine in southern Afghanistan, killing him and another soldier.
But the more Mr. Fitzgibbon thought about Bin Laden’s death, the less he felt like rejoicing; to do so, he said, “makes me no better than him.”
Here was the truth of the matter. A person cannot blow a hole in the side of Lower Manhattan, send planes crashing in Pennsylvania and Virginia, kill more than 2,900 Americans — and not pay the price. At the same time, at least for Donald Fitzgibbon, Bin Laden’s death neither justified the war nor gave meaning to the tragic loss of Patrick Fitzgibbon and thousands of other soldiers.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Mr. Fitzgibbon said. “It don’t always work that way.”

Cf. também:

• Death of Osama Bin Laden: How Significant a Moment? - Interactive Feature
• A Mood of Triumph and Sober Reflection