To me, the execution of bin Laden was more punctuation than poetry — a period at the end of a Faulknerian sentence. That is, too long and rather late-ish. To the 9/11 generation, if we may call it that, OBL wasn’t only the mastermind of a dastardly act; he was evil incarnate and the world wouldn’t be safe until he was eliminated.

Would that justice were so neat and evil so conveniently disposed of.

Perhaps it is a function of age, but I find no solace in revenge. What I do experience at such times is overwhelming sadness about the human condition, our bloodlust and attraction to spectacle. I have felt similarly twice before in recent memory — on the day when Saddam Hussein was hanged and, under drastically different circumstances, during the 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas.