"USA! USA!" New Yorkers Cheer Bin Laden's Death at Ground Zero

At Ground Zero bin Laden’s death is wildly celebrated. This is a chance for New Yorkers to draw a line under the trauma of Sept. 11.

This is all a bit unpleasant for her. She is against the war, she says, and of course, it is always bad when somebody dies. But then Tamara Reynolds, a 30-year-old actress from New York, says: “I’ve never celebrated someone’s death before, but tonight I’m drinking champagne.”

Jubilation in Washington and New York

Then she begins to sing the U.S. national anthem with thousands of other New Yorkers who have spontaneously gathered. “When I heard the news,” says Reynolds, “I knew I had to come down here.”

Since 2001, a wound has been gaping in the heart of the city.

Reynolds came here, to the place where the World Trade Center once stood. Here, where Osama bin Laden affected New York so badly, that for almost 10 years, there has been a gaping wound in the heart of the city.

The first people arrived at Ground Zero a few minutes after President Obama announced the death of bin Laden on television. Almost an hour later, shortly after midnight local time, around 1,000 people gathered. They were singing the national anthem, waving flags, chanting, “USA! USA!” over and over.

Tamara Reynolds is right in the thick of it on Church Street, no more than 10 feet from the hole that was Ground Zero for so long. She points to where a few dozen stories of the new Freedom Tower now stand, which is finally being built after years of debate. “The guy destroyed this place, but now he is dead, and a new tower is rising here,” she says about bin Laden. In other words: We won.

New Yorkers sing the national anthem again and again.

This feeling of victory can be felt more and more on this night in New York at Ground Zero. A few meters further we find Timothy Hill, a 27-year-old with short hair. He is in the U.S. Marines; he has completed three operations in Iraq; many of his comrades were killed in action. He says: “Now, it has all been worth it.”

Barack Obama’s Speech to the Nation

When Hill heard the news on television, at home in the suburb of Staten Island, he got into his car and drove for 30 minutes to get here. He sped, he says. He just wanted to be here, “in this place where there was so much suffering.” Now he is standing on Church Street and has draped a U.S. flag around himself. He is carrying his girlfriend on his shoulders, and she is waving a flag through the night. They are singing the national anthem for the third time already.

Somebody starts to sing it again, and almost everybody sings along. This happens every 10 minutes. Now, it is a young man who has climbed onto a street name sign who is directing the choir. Timothy Hill sings the wrong words during the second stanza. He has to laugh; he says it has never happened to him before. Now the crowd shouts: “USA! USA!” Then at least a few hundred, “Yes, We Cans” — the old Obama slogan.

How the U.S. Hunted bin Laden Down

Bin Laden’s death is also a success for Obama; this day could even change the presidency. But when it comes to the president, there is no consensus here in this night of celebration in New York. Iraq veteran Hill says that Obama wanted nothing more than to bring us back from the war on terror. He should not be allowed to take credit for the success. His girlfriend nods. She says she wants to hug George W. Bush and thank him.

New Yorkers are relieved: “Now the last piece has fallen into place.”

According to the enigmatic star of the evening, a young man who is wearing a U.S. naval uniform, many people see it differently. He holds a cardboard sign in the air, which reads: “Obama, 1 — Osama, 0.” “Hold the sign up!” someone shouts. Camera crews crowd around him; photographers want to write down his name. His name is Hector Santini. Eight years in the Navy, he says. He has been a Naval reserve for four years now. Today he got his uniform out of his closet because he is proud — proud of his service in Iraq.

The U.S. kills Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

As the cameras pan, Santini tells us that it is not even his sign. He saw it lying on the street, and just took it. “But what’s written on it is true.” Of course, Obama deserves the credit, he says. After all, he ordered the attack against bin Laden. But he says it is much more important that New Yorkers can be at ease now, after all these difficult years. That is the other feeling that can be felt tonight all around Ground Zero. Timothy Hill says: “Now the last piece has fallen into place.” The New Yorkers may have dealt with the darkest chapter in their history tonight. Tamara Reynolds says the city will be completely different tomorrow.

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