Osama bin Laden's death doesn't change a thing

Osama bin Laden's death is certainly good news, and it certainly makes us FEEL good. But in the big picture, nothing changes.

Before you roll your eyes and call me a party-pooper, I should note that it's not bad that things won't change. In many ways, it's another sign of how tried and true we are.

Think back to that day in December 2003 when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein. I know I breathed a sigh of relief, and thought to myself, "Maybe this really is the beginning of the end." The Iraq war raged on for another six-plus years, and the post-Hussein era was among the darkest days of that conflict.

We finally turned it around in Iraq, but it took something much more important to get us there: Our ability to own up to the fact that the strategy we had wasn't working and that a change in course was required.

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Former President George W. Bush had to own the mistakes, which wasn't easy for a man unaccustomed to admitting he was wrong on some things. He deserves credit for owning the bad part and resolving to change direction. President Obama ordered the attack that killed bin Laden, and it's a huge moment for him. But Bush deserves some credit, too. We could have cut and run when the going got tougher and the opinion polls went south. But we pressed on.

Back home, we went on with our consumer-driven lives, and a trip to Ground Zero in New York City last year really drove that point home to me.

Gone were the rows of lit candles and personal notes that used to line the sidewalks around this place. To the naked eye it was and is just another construction site people pass by in a hurry on their way to wherever.

I was angry at first. It wasn’t the thought of what happened here. My emotion there is one of sadness.

I was upset that people seemed to be walking by without any thought of all the people who met their death at the hands of terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, right in that very spot. It was almost as if the pictures of twisted metal, smoke and crushed bodies never existed. It was too much for me to take.

But I kept walking around, circling Ground Zero like a bird looking for a nest that had blown away in the wind. As I started to process the scene, my mood shifted again.

I realized these people were doing something special.

No matter where they were going or what they were thinking, they were moving -- living -- horrific memories be damned.

They were doing what we all should be doing, living each day to the full instead of cowering in fear in the corner.

Doing so honors the dead and is a collective middle finger to those who destroyed those towers and wished we would stay scared.

In a strange sort of way, that's courage, too.

Now bin Laden is dead. It's another turning point. But it doesn't change a thing.

We moved on and made him irrelevant a long time ago.

By the time our people moved in and filled him with bullets, he was already a nobody.

--Bill Brenner