The Dalai Lama said (approximately), "Osama bin Laden deserves compassion" after bin Laden's death in 2011. Here is an explanation, aimed at Western audiences.
Osama bin Laden deserves compassion in the same way every living thing (and maybe nonliving things, too) deserves our compassion. Philosophically, this compassion is different from Christian compassion, which emphasizes that the compassion is directed outward toward someone else -- often seen in practice as limiting compassion only to those personally close to you. In contrast, Buddhist compassion emphasizes the inward perspective.
The notion is simple, perhaps so simple as to be incomprehensible: a loss has occurred. To be compassionate is to simply acknowledge that at the most basic level, in his death, a loss has occurred: a human being has been destroyed.
Pause for a second. Don't lose sight of this: this compassion, this inner acknowledgement.
Then, only as a second step, one can layer on further concerns: a military analysis or a game theoretic analysis or an economic analysis or a political analysis or moral or judicial analysis. Furthermore, we are perhaps biologically programmed to enjoy Schadenfreude. All these things are real, but are secondary analyses. Don't jump to the second step without acknowledging the first.
Completely different perspective: consider distant aliens looking at our planet as giant feedlot for their upcoming meat harvest. They feel sadness at bin Laden's death: a human being has been destroyed.
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