When Strategy, Vengeance and Justice Converge
May 7, 2011
This week the news reports and commentaries filled the papers and web sites dissecting into the thinnest slices the killing of Bin Laden. To some, the shots that pierced his head constituted an “extra-judicial” execution in violation of his human rights and international law. (See “Obama’s fickle European fans,” by Charles Lane, “Bin Laden, Extra Judicial killing-And The Shining Example That Was Nuremberg
The difficulty some are having is that the U. S. Navy Seals killed Bin Laden instead of capturing him so he could be tried for his “crimes of mass murder.” It needs to be remembered that the plan carried out by the seal team was one of three options offered to President Obama. Another option Obama could have chosen was to have stealth bombers obliterate the Bin Laden compound with 2,000 pound bombs. Ironically, had this method been used, critics complaining about violations of international law or justice would have to find something else to carp about. But they would not claim that international law or Bin Laden’s rights to a trial had been denied.
Perhaps the problem some are having with how Bin Laden was killed amounts to the problem of defining what he was. How do we categorize him? As enemy combatant? As criminal? As terrorist? He is these and more: a hate filled man obsessed with planning the murder of as many innocent human beings as possible in the name of an ideology that claims divine justification for its actions. In the end, the killing of Bin Laden is a triumph of reason over the fanaticism of benighted men (and women) who want to murder any who resist their desire to oppress all with their totalitarian theology.
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