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Reflections
Reflections
by Rebecca Zimmerman
Osama bin Laden is dead, and it makes me want to cry. Puzzle that one out, if you will. Bin Laden has dogged my professional life since 1998. On September 12, 2001 I was asleep on a bus in rural Nepal when a rap on my window woke me in time to hear, “your World Trade Towers, they are gone!” I scribbled in my journal all the way back to Kathmandu; even without details I wrote that I knew it must be Osama bin Laden. Today, Afghanistan is my life. After two extended field research trips embedded with the military and working with Afghans, I’ve returned home to write my dissertation on the U.S. military’s experience there. By rights, I should have been among those who gathered by the White House in joyful celebration. But as I examine the reasons much of America is celebrating I cannot find justification for such brash, self-congratulatory cheer. And I am not alone, those friends of mine who have shouldered the greatest burdens of the last decade are somber and qualified in their reactions.
Rebecca Zimmerman is a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a fellow with the Truman National Security Project. She has extensive field research experience in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
by Rebecca Zimmerman
Osama bin Laden is dead, and it makes me want to cry. Puzzle that one out, if you will. Bin Laden has dogged my professional life since 1998. On September 12, 2001 I was asleep on a bus in rural Nepal when a rap on my window woke me in time to hear, “your World Trade Towers, they are gone!” I scribbled in my journal all the way back to Kathmandu; even without details I wrote that I knew it must be Osama bin Laden. Today, Afghanistan is my life. After two extended field research trips embedded with the military and working with Afghans, I’ve returned home to write my dissertation on the U.S. military’s experience there. By rights, I should have been among those who gathered by the White House in joyful celebration. But as I examine the reasons much of America is celebrating I cannot find justification for such brash, self-congratulatory cheer. And I am not alone, those friends of mine who have shouldered the greatest burdens of the last decade are somber and qualified in their reactions.
Rebecca Zimmerman is a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a fellow with the Truman National Security Project. She has extensive field research experience in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
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