9/11: Do we have closure?

Osama bin Laden was quickly felled by two bullets from the gun of a U.S. Navy SEAL during an assault May 1 on the al-Qaida leader's Pakistani hideout, ending a decade-long hunt.

Killing what the world's most notorious terrorist wrought with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on American soil has proved harder for the people who lost loved ones and for the nation as a whole.

“It's inconsequential, really,” said Orland Amundson. “It's fine he's gone, but it doesn't help or make me feel any different.”

Amundson and his wife, Karen, lost their son, Spc. Craig Amundson, when a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon, where the 28-year-old worked, on 9/11. Craig Amundson grew up in Marion and Anamosa.

Bin Laden's death also didn't end the fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. Nor did it stop Islamic extremists from wanting to attack the West, with al-Qaida being too decentralized for bin Laden's killing to mean its defeat. The threat from other terrorist organizations is still looming, experts said.

“It was probably symbolically more significant than operationally,” said Brian Lai, a University of Iowa professor who studies terrorism and international conflict.

There's no denying the symbolic importance of bin Laden's death to America.

This man was synonymous with al-Qaida and held responsible for terrorist attacks that ended the lives of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11 and dragged America into war, along with countless other economical, legal and security-related effects.

Word of bin Laden's death spread quickly through social media the night of his killing, and some people even took to the streets.

Said President Barack Obama, in announcing the news: “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al-Qaida.

“Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort.”

It didn't end the grieving of everyone who lost a loved one on 9/11 or in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.

‘He's still gone'

Karen Amundson didn't want to talk about her son's death for this story, saying it was still too difficult a subject. Orland Amundson said that it sometimes seems surreal, that it's hard to believe it has been a decade.

The 67-year-old recalls going to work at his pharmacy in southern Missouri that September morning, “cool and bright sunshine, and a clear day.”

He heard of the attacks on the World Trade Center on the radio, and then he learned the Pentagon, where his son worked as a media illustrator for the Army, was hit. He closed the store, went home and watched news coverage on TV. There was no word from Craig Amundson.

That evening the Amundsons' pastor came over, and they decided to go to Washington, driving through the night and arriving late afternoon the following day. It took more than a week to confirm their son's death.

As with bin Laden's killing, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks doesn't carry added significance for Orland Amundson.

“He's still gone,” he said of his son. “It's just a number. Sure, it's important, and I'm grateful people remember and everything, but it's just another anniversary of the tragedy.”

Whether someone found closure with bin Laden's death depends on the individual, said Dr. Steven Berkowitz, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist who has studied recovering from trauma caused by disasters and terrorism.

Who they lost, what their current situation is, whether they've moved on all come into play. Losing a child is especially traumatic, he said.

“Closure's an emotional response, and so, for some people, (bin Laden's death) actually acted as a traumatic reminder,” he said. “And for others, it gave them a sense of finality. And for some, it did provide a sense of closure.”

Patty Sourivong of Iowa City feels about the same as the Amundsons concerning bin Laden's killing. Her son, 20-year-old Sgt. Kampha Sourivong, was killed in Iraq in 2006, and she sees the war there as being tied to the 9/11 attacks.

“As far as closure, it's not going to bring my son back, and it's not going to bring the people from 9/11 back,” said Sourivong, 45, “but it does give me some comfort knowing he's not out there training anymore people for terrorism.”

The Rev. Kris Kincaid of Dubuque said when he heard of bin Laden's death, he, too, hoped it would prevent more killings. He said being a Christian and knowing that his sister, Karen Kincaid-Batacan, also believed in Jesus helped comfort his family when the plane she was in crashed into the Pentagon.

Kincaid-Batacan, a 40-year-old Washington lawyer who grew up in Waverly, was on a flight that was supposed to land in Los Angeles.

Kincaid, 53, said his grief comes and goes. Something on the radio, for example, might take him back to his childhood and make him think of his sister.

Emotions also are stirred up by 9/11-related events like the anniversary, in part because reporters call. He doesn't mind talking but said he won't give the negative answers he feels some of them are probing for, saying that destroys him.

So he recalls things like how the custodial staff at his sister's office left flowers in her memory after her death.

“We forgive and we go on, but I don't think we want to be foolish and forget,” he said.

‘I didn't do enough'

What Iowa City firefighter Glenn Pauley cannot forget is the feeling of dust collecting on his teeth, dust from the pulverized twin towers and thousands who died in them on 9/11.

Pauley, now 40 and living in Solon, and another Iowa City firefighter, Jon Harding, drove to New York City a couple of days after the attacks. Pauley had tested to be a New York City firefighter before 9/11 and, from that and other visits, knew some of the firefighters killed in the World Trade Center.

The pair spent four days searching the rubble. Pauley also remembers the sweet but nauseating smell of the dead. They left when they were too exhausted to continue.

“When I was getting back into the car and leaving, we sat there and thought, ‘Well, I didn't do enough,' or, ‘I should stay longer,' ” Pauley said. “You just had all that stuff going through your head, and it went on for months and months.”

He said he still carries a bit of that, knowing that when his friends in New York look up, there's a hole in the Manhattan skyline reminding them of what happened.

Hearing of the killing of bin Laden - from his wife, who yelled upstairs to him when he was in bed - did bring a boost. Pauley said he “loved it.”

‘Boogeyman' is gone

Sam Sommers, a social psychologist at Tufts University, said he believed bin Laden's death helped bring some sense of closure from 9/11 to the average American, although he said that may not be the case for people with more personal connections to the attacks.

The world is an unpredictable place, but people like to psychologically impose some order and rational explanation on what goes on, Sommers said. That was hard to do after 9/11, but getting bin Laden, the principal villain of the attack, helped close the loop on that for some people, he said.

Bin Laden's death also makes this a much different 10-year anniversary than it otherwise would have been, Sommers noted. There won't be news stories or political finger-pointing about why bin Laden wasn't yet caught. Bin Laden won't release a tape celebrating the attacks, unless it was recorded before his death.

“It's a very different psychological feel to this now, because the focus is really on the story from 10 years ago and what it meant and how people are doing today,” he said. “And we don't have the ‘big boogeyman still out there' aspect of the story.”

Still, the effect of bin Laden's death would have been even bigger had it happened in the first few years after 9/11, said Victor Asal, a terrorism expert at the University of Albany, State University of New York.

The American public's focus has shifted from terrorism to the economy. Also, the country has launched two wars since 9/11, and Asal said the Iraq War and other actions have led to more terrorist groups plotting against America.

Bin Laden's death gave the White House the symbolic victory it needed to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, New Yorker magazine reports. Even so, Asal said, it's been several years since the focus of the Afghanistan War was on al-Qaida.

He also said al-Qaida is a different organization than it was 10 years ago. He described it as more cellular now, with franchises worldwide. It can't be stopped by decapitating its head.

Obama administration officials believe al-Qaida's defeat is within reach, according to recent Associated Press report, and the reported killing of the organization's second-in-command in late August further emboldens those feelings.

Asal acknowledged that taking out bin Laden was a blow to al-Qaida and gave a psychological boost to America.

“But it is simply not having the same impact it would have had seven, eight years ago,” he said.

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