I wasn't and would never be one of the ones out there celebrating in the street, but if you can't understand where this is coming from OP, you're not thinking hard enough.
It's not about Bin Laden himself -- it's about the sense of closure his death brings, as a kind of total apotheosis of the age of terror, homeland security, airport checkpoints, etc that his acts incited. This is particularly true among our generation, for whom that world was made the new norm. It's like we've finally been released from a shuffling, decade-long straight-jacketed limbo.
We haven't, of course, and the war on terror is far from over, and even tactically speaking, Bin Laden's death affords little outside of its symbolic effect, and what I imagine will be a significant boost in relations with the Muslim world (especially considering the 'Paragon Interrupt' -like decision to bury him according to Islamic customs).
But it feels like we've just emerged, blinking into the light for the first time in years -- so I can understand that some people might express it the way they did, and I understand even more that I have absolutely no right to judge people (particularly New Yorkers!) based on their honest emotional reaction to something so far above and beyond and outside the scale of my sense of human reckoning.
Maybe you should think about that.
