'We Got To Get Osama'

When Anthony Paci enlisted in the Army at age 24, his mother wondered what he was thinking.

"He said ‘We got to get Osama,'" Helene Paci recalled on Monday, a day after President Barack Obama announced that a team of Americans had killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden at a compound in Pakistan.

“I’m sad Tony wasn’t here to see it, but I know he and all those guys are having a big party up in heaven," Helene Paci said of her son and his fellow soldiers who had been killed in the wars launched since Sept. 11, 2001.

Spc. Anthony A. Paci, 30, died March 4, 2010, in Gereshk, Afghanistan, after the vehicle in which he was riding rolled over. The Washington Post reported that Paci was in the spotter position in a speeding Stryker vehicle and instructed the driver to swerve to avoid an oncoming car carrying an Afghan family.

He was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star.

Paci grew up in Bethesda and attended Walt Whitman High School. He lived in an apartment in Rockville when he enlisted. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in Tacoma, WA.

Helene Paci said that when she heard of the successful military operation to take out bin Laden her first thought was: “Job well done."

Anthony Paci left behind a wife, a son and two daughters, all now living in California.

Knowing that her son's widow, Erica, would be on Facebook, Helene Paci said she logged on Sunday night and posted a message: “Way to go!”

She said that she was happy for her son's fellow soldiers.

“I always thought that it wasn’t in vain, but it’s comforting to know that my son didn’t die for nothing,” she said.

Now, she said, “The job’s done and it’s time to come home.”

Service members are needed to “double up on guards” at embassies around the world and to protect American soil, she said.

But for now, she said, soldiers who are deployed in Afghanistan need prayers for their safety.

“Everyone needs to keep in mind the young men who are still out there," she said. "It’s probably really dangerous in Afghanistan right now, probably more dangerous than it was yesterday.”

Paci said that she believes the American public has become "complacent" when it comes to the war and hopes that the country will be united by the news of bin Laden's capture.

“I hope people will sit back and go, ‘Wow, so that’s what we’ve been doing for the last nine-and-a-half years,’” she said.