He's dead Jim

The president did not use the word "evil" in his speech, and this was a good thing.

Osama bin laden was a man, man that did terrible awful things, horrific acts of destruction and murder. I am NOT defending him, or anything he has done, but I think it is important, for the sake of our own humanity, that we refrain from calling a person "evil." To call him evil makes him a fictional character in a story, makes him more than just a man, it makes him immortal. When we call someone evil we justify doing things that distance ourselves from what is morally upstanding and right. We give in to baser instincts and become full of murderous rage. Look at Hitler. For a long time, Hitler did not mean "a man that did terrible things," Hitler meant evil, meant monster from some dark hellish cave. Now people joke about Hitler, because his idea has become more human. He is still a demon in the eyes of many, but he has lost some of his power.

When we call Bin Laden evil, we put him outside of humanity as a whole. We wash our hands of him, set him up to become the devil himself. We forget that he is part of the human collective, that we, as a species, are capable of horrific acts. We need to remember that he was a human, that he was killed by a bullet, and that he was not the devil himself. If we call him these things, if we give into the temptation to put him in a category outside of "human" we forget that there are forces that shaped him, people who influenced him, ideas that made him who he was. What if no one ever told Hitler that the Jews were evil (I'm sure he used the word)? He didn't come up with the idea on his own.

Evil is not a human trait. It is a construct. When we label people as evil we make it OK to do things that we would not do to people. Bin Laden was the outcome of something, he did not poof into existence and start corrupting the planet. He did what he did because he thought that some people were evil, that some people were not human. Lets not return the favor.

Today is a day to remember those lost on 9/11, and to think about how we can make our world a better place without labeling some people as evil. We must respect the humanity of everyone so that no one becomes a victim.

I'm still glad we got the fucker though.