Here's to you, Mr. Waizer.

It is Monday morning here; still Sunday night in America. I came into the office early and was sitting at my desk when my boss, Don, came quietly and told me that Osama bin Laden is dead. I watched live on The New York Times’ website as President Obama announced to the nation that our CIA operatives have killed Osama bin Laden and have obtained his body. I cried through his address, which lasted about ten minutes. I did not know precisely why I was crying.

Perhaps I cried because bin Laden was found and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, some 1,500 miles from where I live. That sounds far away— and it is— but it’s the next country over just the same.

Perhaps I cried out of relief, feeling that a chapter of a national nightmare has finally closed. I remember the morning of September 11, 2001 so clearly, sitting in a middle school chorus room as we heard an announcement that the first tower had been hit. Even more clearly I recall sitting in my next class, eighth grade American History with Mrs. Edington, watching live on CNN as the second tower was hit. The confusion and elusion that began that day seemed finally finished this morning.

Perhaps I was crying out of conflict in my own heart: is killing Osama bin Laden truly an act of justice? Or is it vengeance? A trial would have been just, to be sure. But this? I do not know.

I am sure there is plenty I do not know or understand. Perhaps attempting to take bin Laden into custody would have risked the lives of too many CIA operatives. Perhaps all other plans had failed. Perhaps the Obama administration determined that there was no other path to closure.

At age 20 I found myself in The Hague, Netherlands, observing international criminal tribunals while studying human rights law. I sat a few yards from Charles Taylor as he stood trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international criminal tribunal created by the U.N. and the Sierra Leone government in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s civil war. The court tries alleged perpetrators from that war charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, the greatest legal offense on earth. I watched as a former military officer testified against Taylor. His extensive accounts of gory, senseless murders allowed and ordered by Taylor were nauseating. To think Taylor should have been eliminated long before was easy. Still, I knew I was observing the greatest vindication possible for all who were denied their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits of their love and labor under Taylor’s rule. The best vindication we can affect in honor of those to whom justice has been denied is to legally take their oppressors into custody and to put them on trial, methodically proving every element of every charge against them through every just and peaceful manner they denied their victims. The validity of their crimes is preserved for the ages in testimonies, physical evidence, court decisions, and legal analysis. They are punished not out of rage, and not out of spite; they are punished publicly and directly, and most importantly, fairly.

To shoot them dead would only perpetuate the injustice they incited.

“‘For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,’ declares the Lord GOD; ‘so turn, and live.’"
Ezekiel 18:32

The same is true of IJM’s work here. To beat or kill serial rapists or slave masters would, indeed, seem vindicating. But we know two things to the contrary:


1. Vengeance belongs to God.

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."
Romans 12:19 (citing Leviticus 19:18)


2. While vengeance is not ours, justice has been entrusted to us.

“Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
Isaiah 1:17

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8


We seek and see justice throughout this country, and in the nine others where IJM currently operates. We are seeing legal systems change, rape counts diminishing, brothel numbers declining, and freedom rising. The reason for our success is not complicated. We work in and through justice systems, engaging local leaders and empowering them to create sound laws promoting human rights, and to enforce the rule of those laws. We do not take matters into our own hands, and we do not work to kill even the most evil of oppressors.

To be sure, the injustices we engage are different from what occurred on September 11. But this truth remains the same: vengeance parading as justice is not justice at all.

Soon after President Obama’s announcement, The New York Times published an article that included a brief interview with a man who was inside one of the World Trade Towers on the morning of the attacks. Here is an excerpt:

"In Westchester, Harry Waizer, a World Trade Center survivor, paused nearly a minute before he began to speak when reached by phone.

“If this means there is one less death in the future, then I’m glad for that,” said Mr. Waizer, who was in an elevator riding to work when the plane struck the building. He made it down the stairs, but suffered third-degree burns.

“But I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama bin Laden.”

Asked whether he felt any closure, Mr. Waizer said: “I’ve said for years I didn’t think there would be, but I’ll probably need to think about that more, now that it actually happened.”

“You know, the dead are still dead,” he added. “So in that sense, there is no such thing as closure.”

He expected the reaction from surviving families to be varied. "Many of them will be grateful he has finally been brought to justice,” Mr. Waizer said. “But many of them will feel that whatever the justice of this, it won’t bring back the people they lost.”

Here’s to you, Mr. Waizer. The “justice” served this week may bring closure. Closure is good, and we can all be thankful for that. But the killing of Osama bin Laden will neither bring back the dead nor fully honor the lives lost.

Perhaps there was never a feasible chance of Osama bin Laden standing trial.  Perhaps.  Still, I cannot help but wish the opportunity had come to pass.