Some thoughts on the day after the funerals of three of the dead from the CIA bombing in Afghanistan

[Stinky The Clown]

Two of them were CIA employees. One was an employee of Xe/Blackwater working under contract. A mercenary. From the infamous mercenary du jour company.

I'm not one to wish people dead. It may be popular to so wish for certain people, and I understand that. I have even participated in such wishing a few times - because I am an imperfect creature.

So I don't celebrate deaths. Instead, at the time of death, I prefer to celebrate the dead's life. But. I can be discriminating. Celebrating death is always disrespectful. In the context of the dead person, it can be no other way. The opposite, however, not celebrating their life, is not, by definition, disrespectful. It is completely neutral.

In the case of these three funerals held in disparate locations across the country yesterday, I can imagine celebrating the lives of the two CIA careerists. I didn't. But I could imagine myself doing so.

Not so with the death of the mercenary. I find the very fact of one being a mercenary distasteful in the extreme. Even as compared to a suicide bomber, who, no matter how misguided, has at the very least the fervor of some belief as some sort of excuse. The mercenary simply kills for money. And that, only if they're, in some minimal way, a fundamentally "decent" person. More often, as has been demonstrated time and again with the many Xe/Blackwater anecdotes that have made it to the collective common knowledge, the mercenaries are a callous, bloodthirsty, malevolent lot. Sport killing. Playing the jackboot thugs. Shooting innocent civilians for sport. Were these isolated cases, they would not be so common.

So while I cheer none of these deaths - including the death of the suicide bomber - I will not celebrate any of the lives. I could imagine my celebrating the lives of the CIA personnel, even as I choose not to. I can not at all imagine celebrating the lives of either the suicider or the mercenary.