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Dispiriting
Actually, I find it a bit dispiriting when the President comes on TV and says "I just had this guy killed" and there's dancing in the streets and the President's chances of re-election rocket.
Was it really out of the question to arrest Bin Laden? Did he have a gun in his hand when he was shot?
And why was the body dumped so quickly? What was there about it they didn't want us to see? I've read the wounds were in the back of the head, but I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure.
Was it really out of the question to arrest Bin Laden? Did he have a gun in his hand when he was shot?
And why was the body dumped so quickly? What was there about it they didn't want us to see? I've read the wounds were in the back of the head, but I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure.
Wouldn't it have been better to have put him on trial? Who does it serve that Bin Laden never gets to tell his story?
Geoffrey Robertson in the Independent (I'd link but LJ won't let me this morning) reminds us of an important fact about the Nuremberg trials. Apparently the Brits wanted to string up the nazi leaders within six hours of capture and it was President Truman who insisted on due process of law, because lynching the bastards "would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride."
I don't really buy all that greatest generation guff, but it's sobering to remember there was once a time when a US President believed his public would appreciate him acting like a civilised man and not some fucking cowboy.
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They weren't nearly so squeamish when they killed Saddam's two sons. That really was a fire fight- and they hung onto the bodies for ages.
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Thanks for saying what you think.
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A trial would have been a HUGE mess for everybody involved, and probably most of the rest of the world as well. Can you imagine the circus that would have swirled around such an event? The political reactions of Islamic countries? The same holds true for keeping the body around; the longer it's held, the bigger a spectacle it becomes, even if nobody sees it.
What if he were acquitted on some idiotic technicality?
And he was killed in a firefight. A nice, clean arrest might even have been a goal, but in a battle, things happen.
He's dead, and good riddance.
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The argument that mounting a trial would be just too much trouble doesn't commend itself to me. Getting at the truth should over-ride any consideration of convenience.
And if he got off on a technicality, that's something that happens in courts of law. Some of the nazis got off too. That doesn't offend me.
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You REALLY think he's a "bogey man" and not a violent, cruel terrorist??!
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9/11 was an terrible crime, but we don't actually know the extent of Bin Laden's culpability. Did he order it? Did he go along with it? Did he learn about it after the event? Did he ever actually claim or commend it?
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You could argue- as I have seen it argued in a newspaper this morning- that the bereaved have been chested out of the trial that would have established exactly where criminal responsibility lay.
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Could the Britwish about the Nazis have had anything to do with the fact that so many British aristocrats supported Hitler in the early days? There's nothing like guilt for inducing resentment and self-righteousness
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And they dumped the body at sea to stop his grave becoming a place of pilgrimage.
It's not pretty. I'd like to have heard the whole story but I am not sure Bin Laden's trial would have achieved that. Justice was probably done but not seen to be done. Let's hope that is not important in this case.
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I don't see why he couldn't have been tried in an American civil court on a charge of murder.
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I believe they should be.
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I can't shake the feeling that it has a lot to do with his crappy mid term results.
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In one bound Obama has almost certainly assured his re-election.
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Not that I think this bozo deserved to live--but we are not savages and ALL of us are bound by the rules of law and civilization, even if we are dealing with a savage person.
I am neither proud nor happy about this. Relieved that he has been caught, yes. However, he is but one cog in a huge machine, as are all who advocate terrorism and acts of ugly violence (such as "shock and awe" visited upon a city full of innocent people).
I am not holding out much hope for the future.
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I believe that Obama has- by now- killed many more innocent people than Osama did.
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I reckon that the fact of UBL's death, and the dumping of his body into the Arabian Sea, will be more likely to demoralize his organization than encourage them to rally around his martyrdom, therefore in all likelihood again saving more human lives than were taken.
I reckon that hitting a hardened al-Qaeda safe house in Abbottabad, with US special forces like this, sends a clear and unequivocal message to AQ's supporters in the Pakistani ISI, thereby again probably saving more lives than were taken.
They call Obama the "Spreadsheet President". As a sometime idealist, I find the totting-up of lives taken vs the number saved a most distasteful business and am glad I don't have his job. But I honestly cannot see how any other course of action would have led to a more desirable outcome, your personal feelings aside, of course.
Juan Cole has written the best essay on the event that I have read so far. I recommend it highly to any interested party.
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The reason is simple: ideologues of whatever stripe value how they feel about themselves more than than they do the lives and limbs of other people. Hopefully, as the Boomers die off, progressive politics will become a lot less narcissistic, but I fear it will be a long, hard, uphill slog.
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I have told the burial at sea was a compromise between Islamic funeral tradition (in which the deceased should be buried as quickly as possible) and fear of the gravesite becoming either a shrine or desecrated (in which case there is a practice of unmarked graves), but the absence of a body still lends itself so readily to so many conspiracy theories, I am not sure it was a good idea. Nobody believes in photographic evidence anymore.
Also I would have liked to see a trial rather than a pointblank execution, for some of the same reasons you and Geoffrey Robertson name.
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The only thing that might have stopped the myth-making would have been the spectacle of the man himself arguing for his life in a court-room.
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Whatever the decision made, there would always be shortcomings. I'm not sure they made the right one, but I understand the reasoning behind it.
The scenes of jubilation in America were pretty gross though. If you see events like that in Somalia, it's shown as a demonstration of barbarism. In the US? It's patriotism.
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They should have taken Obama alive. It's confirmed now he was unarmed. This was an assassination.
The scenes of jubilation were disgusting.
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What is even funnier, is that you are far from the first to make this little slip.
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Either way my respect for Truman has gone up several notches.
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He may not represent a specific country, but I would argue he *did* declare war on the U.S. And the goal of warfare is killing. Not trial by jury. When someone declares war on you, then yes, you have every right to kill them in order to protect your people.
I can't bring myself to joyously celebrate another human being's death, but I can't say I'm overly grief-stricken about Bin Laden's demise, either. I'm not fond of much of the my country's foreign policy, and I do get why so many people hate us. But killing thousands of civilians isn't the way to make your point. He lost his right to have his side of the story heard when he did that. Which isn't the point of a trial, anyway, of course.
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But politicians like wars- and so, for some reason- do electorates.
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The body was dumped quickly because Islamic burial practices demand quick disposal; it was done at sea to prevent the creation of a shrine. "What don't they want us to see" is an odd question since the administration probably decided to suppress photographs to avoid backlash in the Islamic world or war crimes questions. (Remember those controversies?)
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The photos will emerge, I think; The pressure is irresistible.