Compassionate Conservatism?

I'm a bit of a talk radio junkie. This morning I was flipping back and forth between NPR, a conservative political talk station, and a sports talk station. At one point, I paused on the conservative station and was immediately horrified. The talk show host (Bill Bennett) had earlier made mention of the missile attack of the "dinner party" in Pakistan where our troops killed a number of Al Qaeda operatives as well as a reported 18 civilians.

Somehow the question came up of dinner music that would have been appropriate to play at this party. People began calling in with suggested songs like, "Great Balls of Fire", "Another One Bites the Dust" and other similarly themed songs celebrating the deaths of these men and women. There was this giddy, celebratory atmosphere that simply disgusted me.

Now, I'm not some crazy liberal and I understand that we need to do militarily what we need to do, particularly in Afghanistan and along the Pakistani border, but where is the common decency that says that any loss of human life is an unspeakable tragedy? Even if the Al Qaeda operatives "deserved it", there were still innocent civilians whose lives were ended as a result of our military action. This is not something to be joyously celebrated. This is something that should be seriously contemplated as part of the sad reality of the world today.

Particularly as a Christian, I think the response should be vastly different than that which I heard on the radio. If Christians believe that those without Christ will exist forever in hell, then those who were killed in this attack not only had lives cut short, but also now have no chance at repentance and salvation. As Christians, this should be cause for great sadness, not silly radio games.