Zero Dark Thirthy

My wife was eight months pregnant with my youngest son on 9/11.  That morning, I called her from work and told her not to turn on the TV.  My sister-in-law was in NYC that day for a training session, but we did not know exactly where.  We could not get through to her cell phone, but we learned from another family member that her training was twenty blocks away from ground zero.

9/11 defines the world we live in nowadays.  This senseless act of violence set off the global war on terror and more than a decade of tremendous human suffering.  It also was the starting point of the new, more unstable, financial dominoes world.  This single event changed the course of history for the whole world for the worse.

The movie Zero Dark Thirty depicts the investigation that led to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Maya, a very young CIA analyst is the main character, a slight built, redhead american woman.  She looks like someone that grew up in a nice little house in a pretty suburban neighborhood. From the perspective of someone like Osama bin Laden, that is the last person on earth to be afraid of.  A fragile female brought up in a self indulgent and corrupt culture could not possibly be a threat.

Maya, in my personal opinion, fits the profile of a nerd.  Nerds are peaceful people that would rather live in their own heads, pursuing the solution to intellectual problems.  Maya made finding Bin-Laden her sole goal in life.  She did this with the complete single mindlessness that nerds can display.  No significant other, no friends, all work no play. One goal in mind.  Not the healthiest approach to life, true.

Maya bravely went down the deepest, darkest rabbit hole anyone could imagine. She maintained an insane level of intensity for a decade. Her focus on the task generated a force-field around her that not even the toughest men in the CIA could resist. The Navy SEAL(s) respected her commitment and saw her as a fellow warrior. These guys did not judge the book by the cover.

Terrorists and other psychopaths hold binary views on the value of a human beings.  Their us vs. them is so intense that they think it is OK to dispose of  worthless "thems".  But it is as if the universe is playing a subtle practical joke on the bad guys. Hitler had to see black athletes win Olympic gold at the Berlin Games.  Bin Laden was brought down by a woman.  Poetic justice.