Americans awoke yesterday to a world without Osama bin Laden, and the reaction was jubilation, a surge of patriotism, a sense that their prayers had been answered and that the United States had finally avenged the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11.
But to many — including some of the same Americans glad to see bin Laden dead — the news didn’t make them feel safer. It led to uncertainty and fear.
Outside Boston, Laura Bell, a 65-year-old claims examiner for a health care company, said she is glad bin Laden is dead but doesn’t believe it will make the United States any safer.
“We can’t relax,” she said. “We can’t sit back on our butts and say this is great. I don’t want us to get lax about security.”
In Washington, David Haas and daughter Catherine Haas from Annapolis, Md., were drawn to the Pentagon Memorial yesterday. Catherine was in kindergarten on the day of the 2001 attacks.
“We’re at the middle of the beginning of the end,” David Haas said. “We’re at war with Islamic terrorism. And we’re going to be at war with Islamic terrorists probably for the rest of my life.”
At the Salt Lake City airport, Mike Hensley wondered whether flying will be safer.
“Safer is subjective,” said Hensley, who served with the Navy in Desert Storm in 1991 and flew from San Diego to Salt Lake City yesterday. “Should him being killed make people feel safer? Not really. He’s had 10 years to build an organization larger than it was 10 years ago.”
State and city leaders across the country stepped up patrols at possible terrorist targets yesterday for fear of retaliatory attacks. Some travelers said they didn’t feel any different about flying in the wake of bin Laden’s death.
“I don’t think they [al Qaeda] would be able to get things together this quickly, after 24 hours, but I think it could be quite scary in the future,” said Lorraine Mastropietro of Lakeland, Fla., who was flying from Newark to Tampa, Fla.
In Dearborn, Mich. — home to one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities — drivers honked their horns and others gathered outside City Hall, chanting, “USA!” and waving American flags.
Everywhere, it seemed, people turned to the flag and American anthems to show their stripes. “Proud to Be an American” was played between innings of the Texas Rangers-Oakland A’s game yesterday.
