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

[sovay]

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.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The faithful are already saying he isn't really dead and that it was a double who was killed. He now has all the makings of a "once and future king".

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.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

It's a full-blown conspiracy theory in the making, isn't it? Even the mainstream media agree that there's a great deal we haven't been told.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Obama had the option of hitting the compound with a drone- and decided against it. I'm glad of that.

They should have taken Obama alive. It's confirmed now he was unarmed. This was an assassination.

The scenes of jubilation were disgusting.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

They should have taken Obama alive.

Paging doctor Freud.

What is even funnier, is that you are far from the first to make this little slip.