Pull the Trigger

What would it be like

to be the man who killed Osama?
What would it be like

to press the button,

to give the order,

to pull the trigger?

What would it be like

to see the people in the streets crying

Hugging each other

Waving their flags

Cheering the death of an old, unarmed man?

No, not a man--

A monster.

He killed so many

evaded us for so long

damn straight we're cheering.

But still a man

still a man with a long, long beard

and a wife who charged at the troops as they knocked down the door

maybe a heartless man,

maybe an evil man,

but still a human one.

They say that on firing squads

one gun is always loaded with blanks and mixed in with the rest

so that each member can pretend to himself that his gun was the blank one--

that he didn't kill that criminal.

Nobody wants to take a life, not even an evil one.

How many lives, I wonder,

does it take to cancel out one?

How many people does a man have to kill

before we have the right to kill him in return?

How many people before we can celebrate instead of mourn?

One million? Six million? Ten? 

How many lives until we can congratulate a murderer?

How many until it isn't murder any more?

And what about that brave, unlucky soldier

did he know the answer?

Did he wonder right from wrong as the bullet left the gun?

What did he wonder

I wonder

the man who pulled the trigger--

the man who killed Osama?

--Patti