Ashe Mountain Times

With the elimination of Osama bin Laden by SEAL Team Six on Sunday, May 1, many people across America breathed a sigh of relief - almost as if a collective weight had been lifted from the back of a country. For others, there was a sense of vindication, an eye-for-an-eye reaction that sent New Yorkers into Times Square and visitors to Washington, D.C., into the Mall in joyous revelry that an enemy of America had been laid low and sunk in the sea.

No matter how satisfying the taste of revenge - justice - retribution, pick your metaphor, is, the real truth is that this was only a milestone. Now, comes the aftermath of the country's greatest manhunt and the reaction of the enemies of America.

With the death of bin Laden, al-Qaida will have someone else take the helm and it will move on. Bin Laden will be made a martyr for the cause and if reports are accurate, the reprisals against American targets, citizens and military will come sooner than later.

In the end, while it is a good thing that a driving force in the attacks on America and the West has met his just end, it can be argued that bin Laden achieved success in his mission to do irreparable harm to America, although at an ultimate personal price.

We will never again be able to travel unmolested or inconvenienced, we will never be given back the rights we lost through the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and we will never be able to say with certainty that we are safe within our own borders.

As long as we live in a society that has threat alerts, and continues to fight an enemy without boarders or a moral code we can comprehend - be it bin Laden or some other extremist - we will continue to face losses from a faceless enemy.