A year after bin Laden’s death, New York moves on

NEW YORK – Exactly one year ago today, May 2, on a rainy Sunday night, New York City received the news that Osama bin Laden, the former Al Qaeda leader who masterminded the attacks which caused the death of almost 3,000 citizens of the Big Apple on Sept 11, 2001, had been killed during a raid in Pakistan.

That night, thousands of New Yorkers gathered in Times Square in a demonstration of patriotic fervor to celebrate the death of their nemesis, their enemy, the man who plotted the darkest day in the history of the most famous city on the planet.

Others just stayed at home glued to their TV screens, listening to President Barack Obama’s speech and all the details of the military operation which closed a major chapter in America’s war on terror.

A few months later, New York commemorated the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and inaugurated the 9/11 Memorial, a site dedicated to the memory of the victims and their families, some of whom have yet to recover the remains of their loved ones.

I was assigned that day, Sept 12, 2011, to cover the inauguration of the Memorial, and was already in line at the crack of dawn alongside other reporters invited to inspect the complex before it was formerly opened to the public later that morning.

Once inside, I walked around the gardens and read some of the names of the victims written on the bronze plates on the sided of the pools built where the Twin Towers once stood, and I thought:

This is not what I expected at all. It’s so simple, the design so sober… It is not a bit over the top like I thought it would be, as a monument such as this would probably have been in any other part of the United States. This is different because New York is different. New York will never forget, and never forgive.

But it moves on.

No vengeance

New York moves on because in my opinion it does not represent the America which seeks vengeance upon an individual for their tragedy. True, quite a few New Yorkers did cheer Bin Laden’s death as if the Giants had won the Super Bowl or the Yankees the World Series, but it definitely was a minority.

The vast majority of citizens here just want to get on with their lives, and as most polls suggest, they do not feel more or less safe in a world without the most famous terrorist of all time.

They know that, for instance, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will never ignore any potential threat, and that is why he is now the most popular figure to succeed billionaire Michael Bloomberg as Mayor in 2013, even though he has never suggested he will run.

Kelly has been criticized in the past few months for alleged racial profiling of Muslim communities with covert surveillance assisted by the CIA. But he refused to back down, even when Muslim leaders boycotted Bloomberg’s annual interfaith breakfast. Bloomberg defended his chief of police, who in turn pledged his unwavering commitment to keeping the city safe.

Osama bin Laden’s death failed as well to result in retaliation by Al Qaeda against the United States and particularly New York, except for a handful of ragtag plotters like Jose Pimentel, a Dominican-born U.S. citizen indicted in November for allegedly planning to bomb a number of targets in the city, but later on deemed mentally unstable and now virtually ignored by the media.

Pimentel, according to the police, idolized bin Laden and even wanted to change his name (after he converted to Islam) to Osama Hussein, after his other hero and another old enemy of America: former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But in the end, no one took him seriously, the same that happened to the Times Square bomber in 2010.

This is because most New Yorkers truly believe that 9/11 must not, cannot and will not happen again.

Bin Laden’s death has not affected this mindset at all. The mood in the city has not changed substantially, the police remains vigilant, and any suspicious package can trigger the evacuation of a whole skyscraper, like a few weeks ago at one of the new buildings near Ground Zero after a novelty grenade was found in a box belonging to an employee.

In addition, New Yorkers are fully aware that bin Laden may be dead, but his ideas are still espoused by thousands of radicals around the globe, and that Al Qaeda is but the main brand name for a world franchise of terrorist groups willing to attack America.

A year later, and as the terrorists move on, so does New York City. – Rappler.com