Jessica Stern on UBL's Death
Jessica Stern has this article over at Daily Beast describing her reactions to Usama bin Laden's death. My sincere apologies for posting this a day late, but it's very much still worth a read. Here's an excerpt from the piece:
But there is another kind of war on terror—the terror we have felt internally since the 9/11 bombings. The killing of bin Laden is what psychologists call a trigger.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Jessica Stern has this article over at Daily Beast describing her reactions to Usama bin Laden's death. My sincere apologies for posting this a day late, but it's very much still worth a read. Here's an excerpt from the piece:
But there is another kind of war on terror—the terror we have felt internally since the 9/11 bombings. The killing of bin Laden is what psychologists call a trigger. For those whose family members were killed or harmed by bin Laden’s many plots, or who witnessed al Qaeda’s attacks first hand, bin Laden’s death will likely reignite the terror they experienced in the past, bringing the past into the present in the form of nightmares, flashbacks, and a feeling of depersonalization. Experts who study the aftermath of trauma have found, in study after study, that significant reminders of past terrors reopen the original wound—not only as a memory, but also in the form of hypervigilance, dissociation, and paralyzing bodily pain. Those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and its aftermath are different people from who they were before the terrorist strikes. Their lives began anew on that day. They will never be the same. And today is a reminder of their loss—not only of their loved ones, but also of their own former identities.
Larkin Reynolds is an associate at a D.C. law firm and was a legal fellow at Brookings from 2010 to 2011. Larkin holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as a founding editor of the Harvard National Security Journal and interned with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. She also has a B.A. in international relations from New York University.
.jpg?sfvrsn=1e58655_5)
