As all of America is well aware, Osama bin Laden is dead.
At 3:30 p.m. EST, May 2, a 40-man Navy Seals squadron raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing the Al Qaeda leader with a bullet to the head during 40 minutes of firefight. Late Sunday night, President Obama delivered the official statement that bin Laden had been killed.
By bits and pieces, more information about his death filtered out, allowing the public to finally acknowledge the group of Navy Seals for their heroic actions, along with the rest of our troops who are still fighting hard for our war on terrorism overseas.
Although it is important to recognize those troops, it’s just as important to realize the thousands worked hard to get the job done for the last 10 years.
It may have been a soldier who pulled the trigger, but Osama bin Laden is dead because in the 3,519 days that followed the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence community and members of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center never lost focus on their mission, even as the public tried to forget that fateful September day.
They worked intently days on end, carefully gathering tedious pieces of information that would led us to Osama after 10 years of excruciating work. We commend them for their patience, their motivation and most of all—the lesson that they taught us.
As students, we must realize that although we might be graduating high school soon, our journey is far from over. Success, whatever your definition of it is, will never come easy.
Throughout high school, we’ve dipped our toes in the pool of failure, whether it’s been an F on a test or a broken relationship. And as we grow, we’ll only be hit by more, and it will hit us harder than it has before.
The CIA agents and government officials who worked on catching bin Laden were faced with plenty of failure, but they never gave up. It took 10 years of false leads and two brutal wars to find bin Laden, and whatever our opinion on the politics of it, we should take the same perseverance and apply it to our personal battles. Failure shouldn’t be an option, nor should it be a reason to give up—despite how hard times get.
In fact, it is far more constructive to turn failure on its head completely. Allow failure to become a motivating factor, and the most magnificent and seemingly impossible tasks can be accomplished on sheer strength of will. 9/11, although a horrific experience, pushed our government to work intently. All of life should be taken on in this manner.
As students take life’s great next step and move onto college, it seems that giving up and giving in becomes common—at least according to statistics. They show that 32 percent of incoming freshmen flunk out of college, and 60 percent of college students never even receive their diploma.
These are pretty astounding numbers for a generation of young people that seems so full of potential. College, and life in general, won’t come without setbacks—no matter who you are or what goal you’re trying to reach. It is how we over come and learn from these setbacks that determines the final result.
Whether it’s hunting after a criminal on the CIA’s Most Wanted list or getting through college, giving up shouldn’t become one of the options that we consider.
So let’s prove the statistics wrong. Let’s take our hardships and allow them to inspire us. Let’s not allow failure to faze us. Our own personal perseverance has the capability to lead to something great.