I feel very uncomfortable celebrating the death of anyone, even the monster that Osama bin Laden was.

I was relieved to hear the news last night,  but this does mean he becomes a martyr, and there will be attempts at retaliation. I don’t think this will cause al Qaeda to fall apart all at once, and it certainly won’t end terrorism.

And I don’t believe it’s proper to throw a party.

Bin Laden caused a lot of pain and heartache around the world. He was the leader of a group that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a single day. I knew some of the dead and a lot of the survivors whose lives were changed forever on that morning nearly 10 years ago.

I do not believe in the death penalty; I never have. But the world is a safer place without him, and it is best that he died.

However, need to remember that it was American policy in the 1980s that created Bin Laden and al Qaeda. We wanted him to fight the Russians, who had invaded Afghanistan. We armed him and trained him, and he turned against us, as often happens when one creates a monster.

In the 1980s, we didn’t care that he was a religious fanatic; giving him arms and training was expedient then, so we did it without considering the consequences. We did the same thing with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and then we took him down when he turned against us and we couldn’t use him anymore. History is full of such examples.

One might hope we would learn our lesson, but I don’t think so. We Americans tend to be short-sighted, looking at what appears useful today, despite the havoc it might create next week.

I don’t want to be an isolationist because we are members of a world community, but we are not called to be the police of the world. We spend more on our military than any other country in the world and we consider the Pentagon’s budget to be untouchable.

At the same time our money is being spent on war and destruction, our soldiers are underpaid and often under-supplied when going into battle. KBR and Halliburton are making a fortune, but soldiers are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan again and again, living for a year or more at a time on an income far lower than they were making at their jobs, and not being treated properly for the damage done to them physically and emotionally.

Bin Laden casued a lot of pain in our American lives. It is good that he is dead, but we are not without blame.