When Americans celebrate the death of bin Laden, are we giving into the same bloodthirsty impulse that motivates Muslim terrorists? Damn straight, says holier-than-thou scold David Sirota:

[I]n the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys. Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head.

This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history — the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.

According to Sirota’s Guide to Terrorist Killin’ Etiquette, the appropriate response to bin Laden’s death is “muted relief” but also “sadness.”

When we lose the sadness part — when all we do is happily scream “USA! USA! USA!” at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war — it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.

Right. Because cheering the demise of a sub-human responsible for the death of thousands — including two people I knew and whose remains were never found — is the moral equivalent of bin Laden’s “sick nihilism.” David Sirota, you’re a depraved cretin.

I have some thoughts on the proper etiquette for responding to smug, self-adulatory, “better than you” drivel like this:

Suck it, Sirota.

If I could have pulled the trigger myself, I would have done it in a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t have paused to wipe the blood spray from my face before marking the occasion with a prolonged Jersey fist pump. My only lament is that science isn’t advanced enough to facilitate corpse reanimation so every American who has sacrificed for the War on Terror could delight in the fear in Osama bin Laden’s eyes while blasting a round or two into his body.

Ten years of American prayers have been answered and the jubilation is pretty freakin’ awesome.

America! F*ck yeah!