Dispiriting

[poliphilo]

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.

 

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. 

Comments

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

OF COURSE there's dancing in the streets! This guy has been practically the devil incarnate to Americans for ten years!

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but he's not the devil incarnate, is he? The American people have been schooled to hate him because it serves the interests of those in power to have the people hating a bogey man instead of asking awkward questions about the world order in which the atrocity of 9/11 too place.

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.

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

You cannot. POSSIBLY. Be. Serious.

You REALLY think he's a "bogey man" and not a violent, cruel terrorist??!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If there had been a trial we would have been able to settle the question.

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?

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

You know, I am really sick and tired to death of all the rumor and speculation about why and whether and how come. Bin Laden was something of an icon to his terrorist followers, regarded as semi-divine, and as such if taken prisoner would probably have been the focus of a major rescue effort. Next question: where would we keep him? Guantanamo? As to the burial: Should we have turned the body over to the Pakistanis so jihadists could erect a fitting monument over his grave? What about a trial? We still have not determined where and when to hold trials for the suspects in Guantanamo. How long would it take to bring Bin Laden to trial and how much news time would be devoted to the issue? As I said, I am sick to death of hearing about it, and sicker yet of the criticism that is constantly being aimed at a president who has been trying to repair the damage done by the previous administration, the lies and everything that is being said about him. There are those who think that Bin Laden should not have been killed, but should have been imprisoned for life -- well, isn't that, in effect, what had already happened with him in hiding isolated from the mainstream all these years? In spite of the isolation he was still able to be an influence on the jihadists. No, I support our president in this action. In some people's opinions Obama cannot do anything right. If he acts they think it is wrong and if he does not act they call him weak. No matter what he says, they allege that it is a lie. Enough already, please!

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

This!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

By granting Bin Laden "martyrdom" the USA has confirmed him in his heroic status. By disposing of his body so brusquely it has left the door wide open to claims that he isn't really dead and "will come again". Already his followers are saying it was a double who was killed. This assassination-- apart from being immoral- is also (it is possible to argue)- really not all that smart.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you, Wolfshift! People who lost loved ones in the 9/11 murders have no conflict about the killing of bin Laden or the actions of our President, the CIA, the Navy Seals, and/or whoever else was involved, and neither do I.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Is that true of every single person who lost loved ones?

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.