Bessent: Time to leave fear behind

Alvin Bessent is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

In an era when celebrity is its own reward, it's fitting that the nation's No. 1 villain will spend eternity in an unmarked, watery grave. That's the right recompense for his brand of infamy.

Osama bin Laden didn't lack for notoriety, of course. His has been the face of international terrorism since 9/11, when the attacks he orchestrated claimed so many lives. And in the years since, he has effectively used the tools of modern celebrity -- videos, email and websites -- to extend his reach and feed our fear, which is the terrorist's true weapon.

So we've constrained our lives in the shadow of terrorism. Checkpoints, pat-downs, watch lists, surveillance and, in New York City, men and women in camouflage uniforms with automatic weapons, have become commonplace.

With each subsequent attempted attack, from shoe bomb to underwear bomb to car bomb, we've become more obsessed with the threat and more accepting of the intrusions. But the plots that lone-wolf al-Qaida operatives managed to mount in the years since 9/11 were limited in scope and posed no existential threat to the nation. And they all failed.

So let's take back our swagger. Let's reclaim that cocky belief that the United States and the American people can play any hand fate deals us and win.

That doesn't mean going back to the carefree ways we enjoyed before 9/11. There are still extremists out there who would like nothing better than to do this country harm.

We have to remain vigilant, but within reason. We don't have to hold people for life without charges. We can trust our courts. We don't have to allow Washington to tap our phones without warrants or intimately pat us down at airports. We should guard our freedoms as jealously as we guard our lives.

Throughout a decade lived underground, bin Laden worked to maintain his celebrity. It served his purpose, which was to disrupt our way of life. We've vanquished bin Laden. Now let's vanquish the fear.