Still searching for bin Laden after all these years

It has been eight years since Osama bin Laden's band of terrorists executed the largest and most deadly attack ever assembled on American soil. While our government has taken significant strides in making sure such an attack will never happen again, the face of bin Laden continues to haunt the families of the victims and citizens of this country while he strolls free somewhere in the world.

Although our intelligence agencies failed us on Sept. 11. 2001, the bigger failure, aside from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been our government's inability to bring bin Laden and his partner, Ayman al-Zawahri, to justice.

In many ways our government has been successful at weakening the al-Qaeda network since 9/11, not to mention it has avoided another attack. Also a recent PEW Global Attitudes poll in Pakistan showed that support for the terrorist group has fallen to 9 percent, which boggles my mind, not necessarily as an American, but as a human being.

While we have shown progress in the war on terror, we have unfortunately failed to find its poster boy, bin Laden, who changed the way all Americans look at the world and our country on that tragic day. Since then he has stood as a symbol for many policy and social issues in America, including an excuse for why we should occupy such nations as Iraq and Afghanistan and political gain by politicians who used his image and ideology to strike fear in voters.

Today, bin Laden has become this sort of cultural villain in America much like Hitler did before him. His name and face grace merchandise and appear in comedy skits, and once a year when a "new" video of the mass murderer surfaces, many of us shudder in fear over the fact that he still lurks out there somewhere in the deep, dark depths of our planet.

9/11 is probably the one day, the one moment, the one event in my generation's short existence on this earth that we can say, "I remember where I was when..." Every generation has that day, maybe numerous days, where a tragic event holds a significant impact on not only the people involved, but a nation as a whole - that day for my generation and many others is 9/11.

While we will never forget 9/11 or the lives lost in our minds or our hearts, justice will never truly be served until we hunt down bin Laden and make him an example to terrorists, and our citizens, that if you attack us we will search for you, we will find you and we will kill you. Let's hope by next year's anniversary we are doing just that.