Osama bin Laden's death leaves little room for reflection as celebratory patriotism takes hold across the US
The New York Daily News put it most bluntly, with a front page which read simply "Rot in hell!"
Across the US, local newspapers captured a similar sense of triumphalism, albeit in slightly more measured words. In Idaho, the Press-Tribune showed the Twin Towers burning on 9/11 after the planes have struck them with the headline "Justice has been done". The Examiner in San Francisco declared the "Butcher of 9/11 is dead". In Prescott, Arizona, just one word was deemed sufficient for the Daily Courier: "Dead".
On the streets of the capital the intense emotions unleashed by the news that the al-Qaida leader had been killed, captured by these headlines, were on full display right outside the White House. Not since 4 November 2008 had there been such a spontaneous outpouring of joy, on that occasion when a black man with sticking-out ears and a funny name – his own description – was elected president of the United States.
For a brief moment, after so many months of partisanship and bitter rancour, it seemed that America had re-united once again. Such is the power of Twitter and Facebook, when combined with the more traditional grapevine of college students out drinking, that it was only minutes after President Obama's announcement that the first revellers arrived outside the White House and struck up the chant: "Ding, Dong, Bin Laden is dead."
A handful of celebrants turned into scores and then hundreds as the bars emptied out and the perimeter of the White House became an impromptu party zone. The national flag materialised out of nowhere and there was even a Stars and Stripes bikini that seems mandatory on events like these. Women took to their male friends' shoulders, joining in the now dominant mantra "USA! USA!" It was like Woodstock for the Millennial generation, pacifist flower power metamorphosed into communal celebration of victory in war.
If the chanting also had the feel of a sporting occasion, that metaphor was made overt at the Citizens Bank Ball Park in Philadelphia where the Phillies were hosting the New York Mets at baseball. In the tense closing stages of the game, during the ninth innings, the stadium suddenly erupted as word spread. Here too "USA! USA!" filled the air.
"It was a good win for us," the Mets manager Terry Collins said after his team narrowly took the game. "But it was a great win for the US."
A more reflective tone was struck at the Pentagon memorial, where a smaller crowd gathered among the 184 benches placed for each of those who died there on 9/11. People sat in silence in the dim light. "It felt like this was the place for a more solemn remembrance about the importance of tonight and what this past decade has meant," a local resident Brian Chiglinsky told the neighbourhood website aRLnow.com.
As the dust settled from all the revelry, the commentariat went to work, debating what was the appropriate note to strike for such an historic event. John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist for the New York Post, adopted what might be called the Daily News position. "The message of the Bin Laden killing is this," he wrote. "We are still here. And he rots in hell."
At the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson made a similar point without the religious connotations. "Triumphalism and unapologetic patriotism are in order. We got the son of a bitch."