Kimberly Emerson

This past Sunday, my parents were visiting, and somehow we managed to spend our entire day media dark.  I don’t get a paper and I don’t have cable, and in the car we listened to a CD.  It wasn’t until I logged on to the internet to check my Facebook account (yes, habit still intact) that I learned of Osama Bin Laden’s demise.  Not trusting Facebook as a news source, I switched to CNN.com and did indeed get the confirmation I sought.  America’s Most Wanted criminal was dead.

My reaction was difficult to describe.  Initially came relief.  I hesitate to call anyone purely bad, but this was a man who – if he did  even a fraction of the things attributed to him – had given up his soul long ago.  After the relief came fear for every American soldier in the world, because the militant groups that he spent his life building were probably going to retaliate for this.  (I don’t want to call them militant Islamists, because I’ve met many kind and loving Muslims in my life, and they would tell you that nothing he did was for Islam.  The good folks at the King Fahad Mosque bring my church huge quantities of Noah’s pudding every year.  How can you not love someone who brings you sweet creamy treats that are actually almost good for you?)  Oh, and a little fear for all the rest of us, too.  Said militants don’t take things on the chin, and they’re often non-discriminatory in targets.  Beyond that lay confusion.  Much of the country openly rejoiced.  I could understand the feeling, and I certainly don’t judge anyone for it, but as a Christian, I’m told to forgive my enemies, to pray for them.  How do you reconcile those things?

Most of the country spent their time afterwards reflecting on September 11, 2001, but I thought of the summer of 1985.

It was my first full-blown Southern California summer.  Los Angeles in August is a beautiful thing when you’re at the beach, but the surrounding valleys are not nearly so pleasant.  Coming as I did from Northern California, I had experienced my fair share of 100+ degree days, but SoCal likes warm nights, too.  San Francisco and parts north will cool down to at least the 70s, no matter how hot it gets during the day.  L.A., not so much.  Like everyone else, I slept with my windows open and a fan on, desperate to get some kind of air stirring.  We turned the air conditioner off at night to save money, and since it really only cooled down the living room, it wouldn’t have been much help in any case.  Tranquil rest was a rare and beautiful thing.

Enter Richard Ramirez, soon to be known as the Night Stalker.

I always thought his first nickname, the Walk-In Killer, more fitting.  He took advantage of all those women just like me who left windows and sliding doors open, trying to get some kind of relief from the kiln-like atmosphere.  Just walked in through the invitingly open door, raped and killed the person he found inside.  His first victim was 79.  Her son found her the next morning with her throat cut.  The next one, a 22-year-old, escaped – he shot her and when the bullet deflected off her car keys, she did the smart thing and played dead.  Her 34-year-old roommate wasn’t so lucky.

One night that summer, someone removed my window screen.  I dreamed – at least I’m pretty sure it was a dream – that a man came into my room and threatened me.  It was frighteningly lifelike.  At the time, convinced that it was completely real, I slammed my window shut and ran into my parents’ room, telling them that someone had tried to break in the house.  Seeing my obvious terror, they went as far as calling the police out the next day.  Examination of my window revealed the screen was indeed off, but no dirt or scratches indicated anyone actually trying to enter the house.  For my part, I’m convinced it was a dream because in order to make the guy go away, I faked an asthma attack.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been that resourceful in real life.

With a serial killer on the loose, plenty of fodder existed for terrifying dreams.  My dad put alarms on both the windows in my room, so that if anyone ever disturbed them again, we’d know.  Ramirez was captured in late August of that year, but those alarms remained on the windows for the next three years that we lived in that apartment.  Fear is difficult to put to rest.

Neighbors recognized Ramirez when he tried to carjack a Los Angeles woman, and after they wrestled him to the ground, they held him there until the police arrived.  When the cameras showed up, Ramirez said something to the effect that he was lucky the police got there in time, because the gathering mob probably would’ve killed him.

I stopped at the back of our living room to watch this broadcast.  Upon hearing his declaration, I said, “He’s damn right he’s lucky.”  I remember the phrase distinctly because swearing was not allowed in our household, but neither of my parents said a word about my unusual vocabulary.

I’m a pacifist at heart, and I’ve always hated the death penalty, but looking at that man who had caused so much horror in my world, there was no question.  I wanted him dead.  Not tried for his crimes, not punished, not redeemed – dead.  Never able to scare anyone ever again.

The fear didn’t really go away with his capture.  I wondered what other people might be out there doing horrible things, people I just didn’t know about yet.  Maybe that’s because I am such a talented worrier, I don’t know.  But once I lost that sense of innocence, once I woke up to the knowledge that bad things can and do happen to perfectly innocent people, I never looked at the world quite the same way again.  I’ve come to terms with it, over the years, and I appreciate the healthy caution it gives me, but I doubt I’ll ever sleep quite as soundly next to an open window as I did before the summer of 1985.  Even if they ever do execute him – he’s still on Death Row, twenty-six years later – I don’t think it’ll help.

I can certainly understand the people who stood in the streets cheering after confirmation came of Osama’s death.  All those who lost someone in the attacks of 9/11 have a right to a feeling of justice in the death of the man who bragged about masterminding that tragedy.  But the voice in the back of my head reminds me that killing that man isn’t going to bring a single one of the 9/11 victims back.  It also tells me that there are many causes to that kind of militance, some because of mistakes the U.S. has made and most pre-dating Bid Laden.  There are plenty of other people willing to carry on his twisted mission.

I can’t argue the right or wrong of killing him.  I’m not sure there really was another option.  Even the Dalai Lama, a man known as an authority on peace and harmony, was quoted in the L.A. Times as saying that while he advocated forgiveness of all human beings, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures.” The man posed a viable security threat, and I can’t see him ever allowing himself to be brought in alive to stand trial (even supposing we could devise one that wouldn’t give him the publicity he obviously craved).  His philosophy preached the rewards of martyrdom, and despite his years in hiding, I have to figure he’d embrace it before he’d face being captured.

What I do wonder about is our reaction.  Was it right for people to rejoice in the streets?  There seem to be two camps on the subject.  One side says, “Hell, yes, he was evil and the world is a better place without him.”  The other finds the photos eerily similar to other people, far away, rejoicing after 9/11.  I understand the rationale behind both reactions.   Personally, I found the shots of cheering crowds unsettling.  But the fifteen-year-old inside me, the one who slept fitfully behind burglar alarms that sweltering summer, could definitely relate to the feeling of vindication.

I won’t judge anyone on either side of the argument.  People are entitled to their own reactions.  But the fact that we are even having the discussion gives me hope.  If we wonder even a little if it’s correct to celebrate the death of an enemy, our society may just have evolved a little further than I thought.

Kimberly prays that you find healing today, from September 11 and anything else that disturbs your rest.

Tags: Bin laden, Dalai Lama, military, Richard Ramirez, September 11