In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s execution, I heard a lot of people spouting sheer poppycock. Some of these schmoes felt we had no business taking care of business in another country. Considering that the country in question was Pakistan, a nation that even really rotten, corrupt countries look down upon, that’s a position not even worth debating.

There were those who felt the Navy Seals should have captured him and brought bin Laden back for trial. Those people may even be dumber than the ones in that first group. The only possible reason we might have considered keeping him alive would have been in order to extract information from him. But inasmuch as the Seals carted off his computer, his files, his letters and, for all I know, his naughty doodles of women without veils, we’re all far better off having him swimming with the fishes.

There are even some people who frown on the fact that crowds of Americans congregated in order to celebrate the death of this creep. To tell you the truth, I understand bin Laden better than I do these holier-than-thou types who I kept seeing on TV talk shows, admonishing the celebrants. I am not engaging in hyperbole, either. Bin Laden was a Muslim jihadist with a messiah complex. We’ve been dealing with those miserable rodents ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, thanks to Jimmy Carter, three decades ago.

But who are these jackasses who think that killing the guy responsible for murdering over 3,000 Americans isn’t sufficient reason to forget an 8.5 unemployment rate, $4-a-gallon gas, soaring food prices and a $14 trillion deficit, for a few glorious hours? I’ll tell you who I suspect they are; namely, the same idiots who show up for candlelight vigils outside prisons when serial killers are about to be executed. While normal people are empathizing with the friends and family of the innocent victims, these moral degenerates think they’re setting a Christ-like example for the rest of us by identifying with the killer. In truth, their pious posturing stinks to high heaven.

I also suspect they’re the same freaks who, with nothing but their own self-righteous attitude upon which to base their convictions, not only kept insisting for years that waterboarding constitutes torture, but that it never leads to the gathering of trustworthy intelligence. Even the fact that it led to bin Laden’s discovery will not dissuade them. You can lead a jackass to water, after all, but you can’t make it think.

So, for starters, waterboarding is not torture. Torture is when punishment is doled out for its own sake. The Nazis perfected it in their concentration camps and the laboratories of Dr. Mengele.

Furthermore, torture leads to maiming and, very often, death. Waterboarding, on the other hand, as generations of fraternity boys, who have been hazed as an initiation rite can testify, leads to severe discomfort. Only a moron can’t tell the difference. But for their edification, discomfort is sitting in the middle seat on a cross-country airplane trip; torture is having to watch a couple of Jim Carrey movies while you’re sitting there.

So far as morality is concerned, I happen to think it was dumb, perhaps even evil, to have given bin Laden such a nice send-off. I feel it sent the wrong message. I know President Obama and others believe it showed the world how fine we are. I think it showed the world that we are so cowardly that we will even show respect to pure evil. If it had been up to me, I would have wrapped bin Laden’s sorry carcass in pigskin, which perhaps explains why I don’t hold elective office. But certainly there had to have been an alternative to washing his body, wrapping it in a white sheet and saying a few respectful words over it in Arabic, before dumping him overboard.

Frankly, I think attempting to show respect to someone whose brains you’ve just recently splattered on a wall is, to put it mildly, an empty gesture. But I think it’s a perfect example of how misguided our war on terrorism has been. For the past decade, we have been walking on eggs where Muslims are concerned. Both Bush and Obama have displayed the attitude of a supplicant, speaking and acting like men who are far more concerned with public relations than with reality.

Whether the topic is Gitmo, some nutty minister in Florida with a book of matches or the proper way to dispose of a monster’s corpse, our pundits and presidents worry incessantly about how it’s perceived in the Arab/Muslim world. We might as well concern ourselves with how our actions are viewed by the inhabitants of the Bronx Zoo.

I say it’s high time that the Muslims start worrying about how they look to the civilized world. I don’t notice that they’re terribly interested with how normal people who live in the 21st century, as opposed to the eighth, regard their honor killings; their female mutilations; their stoning of rape victims; their burning of Old and New Testaments; their destruction of churches and massacre of Christians; their relentless missile attacks on Israel; their bombings of discos, subways and school buses; or their televised beheadings.

We keep hearing that most Muslims are peaceful people who mean us no harm.

I’d like to believe it. I really would. But, right now, the only one I’m sure of is Osama bin Laden.