Celebrating a Death?

Religious leaders and pundits have commented on the spontaneous celebrations that arose on the announcement that Osoma bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Navy Seals. The gist of their comments seemed to complain that celebrating a death, regardless of the decease's history, is not appropriate. I mostly agree, but in this instance I thought the celebrations were appropriate.

The celebrants may have been happy that OBL or UBL as some have used for Osama/Usama, is dead but it seemed to me the celebrants were joyful that for once in recent history something has gone right. The military operation was successful, the person who organized the attack on the people of this country died, and justice has been served.

There is no way that OBL can be seen in a human context. When we watched the World Trade Center buildings collapse and knew that inside were thousands of innocents being crushed and mangled to death, the perpetrator acted inhumanly and therefore lost his status as a human being.

I believe that no one is beyond redemption, but I am not certain about OBL qualifies. However, that is not my call. The best thing that could happen to him after death is to be unremembered. Having a memory of him in anyway keeps him alive. However, that cannot happen. The world will always remember this man as a plotter who wanted people killed, not just dead, but killed. The world will remember that this man saw good in people being chopped to pieces by the shards of a collapsing buildings. This man wanted to see people cremated alive as airplanes exploded. No, there's nothing good about him.

Celebrating his death makes all life worthless. We need to celebrate that our government does work, our leaders lead, our people who swear allegiance the Constitution and commit themselves to serve the people the Constitution protects are so professional at what they do. That is what the spontaneous celebrations were about on Sunday, May 1.