When a terrorist dies, is it OK to gloat?

[May 05, 2011]  NEW YORK (AP) -- When Hyojin Jenny Hwang wrote on Facebook that she was saddened by the sight of young Americans like herself jubilantly cheering Osama bin Laden's death, the angry response was swift, even from friends.

"One friend told me she felt judged for feeling happy," said the 30-year-old mother from New Jersey. "And another one simply unfriended me on Facebook."

As the hours passed, though, and the initial giddiness settled a bit, Hwang, who says she feels strongly that a death should not be celebrated, received messages of support from people similarly unnerved by the scenes of euphoria. Those scenes have included chants of "USA! USA!" at the White House gates and ground zero; signs such as "Obama 1, Osama 0"; or T-shirts now available online, saying "GOT HIM!" and illustrated by a stick figure of a dead bin Laden.

It's one thing to be satisfied that the world's most wanted terrorist has been killed by a U.S. Navy SEAL unit in Pakistan. But where does satisfaction end and gloating begin? It's a question being posed online by ordinary Americans, religious figures, various commentators and several 9/11 widows. And it's bound to be on President Barack Obama's mind as he treads that fine line in a visit Thursday to ground zero.

Could Obama's visit in itself be interpreted as gloating? The president, who decided Wednesday not to release gruesome death photos of bin Laden so as not to "spike the football," seems well aware of the dangers. He planned a somber and quiet New York visit -- no speech, the White House said, just laying a wreath at the World Trade Center site and meeting privately with families and first responders.

"The president thinks it's entirely fitting and appropriate to visit the site ... in the wake of this significant and cathartic moment for the American people," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The trip had support from the city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who said the president "should be here meeting the families," and from the tabloid Daily News, which called the visit "most welcome at this hour of national unity and uplift."

It was impossible to tell whether those Americans feeling uneasy with Sunday's scenes of celebration were in the majority or minority; the few polls conducted since the news broke haven't asked the question. But for three women who lost husbands on Sept. 11, the jubilant scenes were disturbing.

Kristen Breitweiser said they brought back images of bin Laden supporters celebrating in the streets on that infamous day in 2001.

"Forgive me, but I don't want to watch uncorked champagne spill onto hallowed ground where thousands were murdered in cold blood," she wrote Monday on The Huffington Post. "And it breaks my heart to witness young Americans cheer any death -- even the death of a horrible, evil, murderous person -- like it is some raucous tailgate party on a college campus. Why are we not somber?"

Another 9/11 widow, Marian Fontana, wrote on Salon of how her son, Aidan, who was 5 when his father died, had gone to school on Monday and called at lunchtime, wanting to come home.

"Everyone is talking about bin Laden. In every class, they are happy he is dead, but I don't feel happy," she said he told her.

And Deena Burnett Bailey, of Little Rock, Ark., who lost her husband Tom Burnett, said she was struggling with how to talk to her teens about bin Laden's death.

"To say that I'm happy that he was killed just seems odd, and it goes against my Christian faith," she said. "The girls and I were talking about it. ... One of them said, `What can we say, Mom? We can't say praise the Lord, he's dead.' I said, `I know. You just have to know that someone else made that decision, and that he will now stand before judgment for having killed so many people.'"

Online, some Americans said they saw absolutely nothing wrong with Sunday's outpouring.

"If you cannot cheer about the demise of a truly wicked man who took so much from us, what do you celebrate?" asked Edward Hannigan, 45, of Chico Hills, Calif., editor of an online music magazine, on Facebook. In another post, he added: "I'm damn happy he's dead. And on top of that, I hope it hurt. A lot."

But Donna Guhr, a waitress in Crestone, Colo., refused to cheer. "Out of ALL the people here in my town I've spoken with I only know two people who agree with the celebrating," she wrote, also on Facebook. "Gives me hope."

In a follow-up phone interview, Guhr, 44, said she was concerned about scenes of the jubilation inciting retaliatory attacks. "He had a lot of followers, and they're not getting any happier with us," she said of bin Laden.

She added that the celebrations made her recall a quote attributed to Gandhi: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Not surprisingly, the question reached the late-night comedy shows.

"I hope I am never again this happy over someone's death," quipped Stephen Colbert on Monday night on "The Colbert Report." His fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart mused: "I suppose I should be expressing some ambivalence about the targeted killing of another human being. And yet -- uhhhh, no!"

Some serious concerns came from religious leaders.

The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that bin Laden's death was justified as an act of war but not as an act of justice. He said death should never be celebrated.

"Such celebration points to the danger of revenge as a powerful human emotion," he wrote on his website this week.

The Vatican said Christians could never rejoice about the death of any human being. But spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that bin Laden was responsible for having caused the deaths of countless innocents and for having used religion to spread "division and hatred among people."

And the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an association of about 700 conservative congregations in the U.S., said its tradition "warns us not to celebrate the death of any human being, even of our worst enemies, but it does not stop us from gratitude that some measure of justice has been exacted."

Some people, like Annie Kim, a cellist in a New York rock band, felt a mix of emotions, shifting over the few days since the news broke.

"As I was watching President Obama telling the news ... my immediate reaction was relief," said Kim, 31. "I thought, he (bin Laden) can do no more evil!"

She was happy.

But later, she said, "I wondered why we couldn't have captured him and given him a trial. I guess in the end of it all, I really was mortified that people were celebrating a death."

On Wednesday, just south of ground zero, Phyllis Mitchell was sitting on a bench in front of a restaurant, keeping on her hardhat during a break from her construction job -- helping rebuild the trade center. She was wary of what Thursday might bring, along with the president.

Though she didn't think the president himself was gloating, she said she was unhappy with what she'd seen on Sunday night in the same spot.

"I didn't like the celebrations I saw," she said. "It doesn't make sense to celebrate anybody's death. Even his."

[Associated Press; By JOCELYN NOVECK]

Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Verena Dobnik in New York and Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J., contributed to this report.

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