A CAUSE TO CELEBRATE? YES.

Everyone has a 9/11 connection. Whether having known someone who died that day, watching it unfold on scene, or watching it unfold thousands of miles away, it has scarred us all.

The man who facilitated that and at least two other attacks on the US abroad has been killed.

The question has arisen: is it wrong to celebrate that fact? My answer is no.

What are we celebrating exactly? It is short-sighted to simply focus on the death or even the manner of death because it diminishes the significance of that death, which is that a person who was the sworn enemy of this country and vowed to continue killing innocent people until we capitulated and conformed to his narrow vision is no more. That is no small event because he had in fact killed thousands of innocents and had proven willing and capable of killing more. This is the quintessential definition of evil.

There is no shame in celebrating the end of an evil.

Moreover there is no shame in celebrating the end of a threat to our national security. Sure, it is not the only threat, and there are hundreds if not thousands of others that are focused upon us constantly, but unless you're willing to say that the death of this man has *not* reduced the threat, or has elevated it significantly and permanently (and I'm not), you have to come to the conclusion that we are safer with him gone.

Could we have captured him and tried him in court? Well, let's follow that to the end: assuming that we could simply have caught and held him prisoner (and I think that is a huge assumption -perhaps too huge to be reasonable), what would we have then done? Put him on trial? Putting aside the expense and time that would have taken -all the time keeping the threat alive if not amplifying it- In the highly unlikely event that he was found not guilty what would we do? Our own laws would dictate that we release him. Release a sworn enemy to go and perpetrate more atrocities against us. If he were found guilty what then? We would put him to death, right? OK what if we kept him incarcerated? Wouldn't that create an instant cause/target for his followers to attack us to free him?

So even assuming we could capture him it would to have led to either the same or an unacceptably dangerous result.

So we did the right thing here, and for that reason, as well as the reasons above. We have cause to celebrate.

But is that really what the people in the streets are celebrating? Some perhaps, but I think what has caused the knee-jerk reaction some have had against the celebrations is the gut feeling that the public celebrations are unseemly. I think the cause of that gut feeling is that what many seem to be celebrating is both detached from the cold reality and enduring scars of the atrocities this man caused, and other darker ideas: Blind nationalism, and chauvinism.

The idea that we were able to end both a threat and an evil is separate and irrelevant idea to the idea that we as a nation are superior. The chants of "USA! USA!" and the wrapping ourselves in flags broadcast around the world are embarrassing because they trivialize the true cause for celebration and reduce the support for our cause from our allies as well as inflame our enemies.

Should we celebrate this man's death? Yes, but not as evidence of our superiority. That evidence has been presented in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria and Libya.

Perhaps instead we should be chanting "Democracy! Democracy!"