The goal of the new logic is clear: it is to bring the accused before a competent court. Anything else would not be mere attainder. How much that goal may have shaped the planning and execution of the Abbottabad operation is not clear, but if it did so we should not refer to the raid as an “assassination.” We have been told that the assault team was ready to recover its target alive if that should prove possible. If military arrest meets resistance, of course, military necessity requires it to be forcibly overcome, and if that costs the target’s life, the loss may be proportionate to the evil of leaving him at large. That the target was personally unarmed in this case need not be decisive if he was effectively defended by others, though how much resistance was actually offered has still not been made clear. Can this serve as an explanation of what happened? Perhaps. Yet on this account we might have expected to hear a word not very much used in recent days: it was surely a failed mission!
Christian citizens need not expect, and should not pretend to, total certainty about the rights and wrongs of this or any other public act. It is no part of God’s plan for their holiness or for their service of the neighbor that they must be all-knowing about the morality of what others have done, even when it is done in the name of the political community. Christians can be useful citizens, though, by being rather fussy about the justifications and explanations offered by political actors for their consumption and approval. Faced with extraordinary actions, they may demand thorough and coherent explanations on morally serious and law-regarding grounds. For myself, I am left thinking that whatever good account there is to be given of why bin Laden was killed, it has yet to be fully made public.
This was not a law enforcement action on foreign soil. It was a military operation carried out against combatants of the US. How do I know this? Navy Seals are not sent to arrest criminals. They are sent to destroy or neutralize threats to our national security. Otherwise an FBI CT Team would have conducted the “arrest”. Shades of Che Gueverra. No martyr here.
This article raises all kinds of questions, that have been there since 9/11. First, our country has made no formal declaration of war against anyone. So when we use our military to do something, we are in a no man’s zone on controlled procedures. But, I believe that the purpose of not seeking a declaration of war by the Bush Administration was so that we would not be hamstrung by having to follow the Geneva Convention protocols, which would not allow us to waterboard or take POWs out of the country to other countries for interrogations, as well as to allow for military tribunals for captured detainees. But the Obama Administration keeps intermixing Justice Department operations with CIA and military operations, which seems not completely out of line, since we have never passed a formal declaration of war. Yet, the Obama Administration freely uses the “we are at war” image, as handy in defending the shooting to death of bin Laden, while opposing waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation. as not being in accord with US values, without explaining what those values are.
From a rationale standpoint, the Bush Administration put us in this no man’s land purposefully, so it could do what it considered necessary to protect the homeland. It basically ignored war protocols and the Geneva Convention protections for POWs by an upspoken understanding that no war had been declared. But it also defended its action and apparently permanent Guantanamo detentions against civil libertarians’ call for civil rights for the detained by saying the detainees were captured on the battlefield and are not entitled to civil rights – only rights provided by military tribunals. The Obama Administration has further complicated the muddle by attempting to try detainees in US courts, with our Constitutional rights but now is saying we are at war. What a mess – legally and intellectually.
I can’t comment on the stuff about internal US politics, checks and balances etc.
But I really don’t see a problem with this killing, in terms of international law. Al Qaida had carried out a major mass-murder operation against Americans, and had publicly declared its intention to do more. Osama bin Laden was the leader of Al Qaida. The US was entitled to attempt to kill him.
Yes, if he had thrown down his weapon and shouted “don’t shoot, I surrender” AND if the Seals had had time to identify what he said AND there were no other threats, yes they would be obliged to take him prisoner. However, I note that in all the (very muddled) reports coming from the White House, it has never been suggested that OBL attempted to do that, and I doubt that he would have wished to.
Its a hard fact that some can’t accept, but international law does allow you to try to kill people! Not whenever you like, but the circumstances here seem to me to provide ample justification. If Al Qaeda had publicly renounced further violence, the situation might be different, but they had not done that, and indeed had threatened further gross and unacceptable actions.
I wonder what this commentator would say about the British SOE assassinating Reinhard Heydrich in 1942? No-one has ever questioned that, so far as I am aware. Admittedly Heydrich had been responsible for far more deaths than OBL, but the principle appears to be the same.