To all my peers who were parading around campus Sunday evening:

May we take, for a minute, the words of the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi:

“In front of the death of man, a Christian never rejoices but rather reflects on the grave responsibility of each one in front of God and men, and hopes and commits himself so that every moment not be an occasion for hatred to grow but for peace.”

However, you do not need to be a devout Christian to understand the phrase applies to humanity and human dignity in general. One could rephrase it:

In front of the death of man, one never rejoices but rather reflects on the grave responsibility each of us has in front of humanity, to each other. May we hope and commit ourselves so that every moment not be an occasion for hatred to grow but for peace.

With this in mind, don’t be mistaken; I believe it is a success for our military that Osama bin Laden has been killed, a man who has been involved in committing one, if not more mass murders. Though perhaps it is a smaller success than our emotion Sunday night might lead us to believe.

Let us not allow for such emotion to make us lose our ability to be the rational creatures that we are. Let us not allow for hatred to make us crazy but use this man’s passing as a time to reflect on the current situation that surrounds his death. For no man’s death is something to celebrate. No man’s death is a party.

If I recall, our declared ‘war’ was with terror, not with Osama bin Laden. Terror is an emotion, one that has been criticized, and rightly so, as one that cannot be won by military efforts. Emotion is something that we all have in us and terror is something we all can experience. A war on terror is a war on ourselves. A war on the things that have the possibility to cause us terror, is a war with our entire world; it is the destruction of ourselves.

The rhetoric would have us believe otherwise and as a result, we, the people, lose sight of the reason we are in a war at all. We stop thinking about the crucial relationships politically, militarily and even economically that surround this event and think it is all about and ends with bin Laden. Wrong.

The main point is we stop thinking, critically thinking.

This is what I saw Sunday night. My peers, well educated in everything from engineering to politics, losing their ability to critically think. They instead gave that up to be part of a mass that not only dirtied their own home, leaving beer cans and cigarette butts all over Central Campus, but lost their individuality.

Our ability to critically think is our most important ally in a world filled with biased news sources, a host of unaccredited online sources of ideas and news and corrupt politicians. A free nation must be a nation of critical thinkers. If not, it collapses into rule of the many, or even worse, rule of the few. To celebrate the death of a man, this small success in the grand scheme of things, Americans gave up the most important element of their free nation: their individuality and ability to critically think.

The death of bin Laden has not brought our troops home, it has not ended Islamist extremists’ resent for Americans — only possibly increased it — it has not created stability in the Middle East — only maybe angered the Pakistanis even more — it has not ended the economic crisis and it has certainly not brought the victims of 9/11 back to the families who miss them.

I ask you, my peers, to look at our situation with wider eyes. I am of the first who would smile to see Americans come together as one; but let us come together as rational individuals, not as a mindless herd.