Assassination

Yes - three blog posts in a row related to the death of Osama Bin Laden, but seeing as every news outlet on the internet is filled with stories about this, I don't think I'm alone in fixating on the topic, and after all it's only been three days. This time I'd like to touch on the actual intent of the raid which occurred on Sunday. Recent information has emerged that Osama Bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot dead, and that its possible there was never any intention of taking him alive.

The original story went that Osama "resisted arrest", and I suppose most people assumed that this involved some kind of shoot-out. New information reveals, however, that he was not in fact armed and supposedly was in bed when he was killed (possibly resigned to his fate?). This makes me wonder if he was intentionally assassinated, or if some Navy Seal just couldn't resist being the guy who fired the shot that got America's most hated enemy. The latter seems like a perfectly plausible explanation, but I would like to think that the most elite of the elite would have a little more self-control and training than that. It seems if the goal was to take him alive if possible, they may have used a bit more discretion. So I also think it's very plausible there was no intention of capturing him, and I can think of several good reasons for wanting to just take him out.

If we had captured him alive, then we'd have to place him on trial, this is something we talked about in class a few weeks back, and there would be some serious issues with a legal case of that magnitude. The first, obviously, would be security. Any courthouse in any public setting would be an instant target for any kind of terrorist attack - especially with the Sheik housed inside. That, coupled with the fact that these sorts of trials take months, if not years, would be that there would need to be a huge amount of resources devoted to providing adequate security, managing the crowds, and dealing with the general pandemonium such a spectacle would cause.

Beyond the logistics though, there are still serious legal issues involved. Firstly, one could easily argue that it is impossible to give Osama a fair trial in this country - something which is required by law. Also, despite the presumption of his guilt by all, it may be difficult to actually tie him directly to the attacks of 9/11, or any of the other attacks for which he is accused, in any kind of legally rigorous way.  Certainly he could be tried, but would it be anything more than a mock trial, a spectacle for the gawking media and public? If we wish to uphold the integrity of the legal system (that is not sarcasm) at all times, then it is seriously questionable whether it would be possible to try Osama in the United States.

In addition, I'm not sure that trying Osama would have had the same political effect. A lot of people feel that he didn't deserve a trial, and perhaps putting Osama on trial would have made Obama look like he was somehow going easy on the terrorists - the exact opposite of his intent with this. So it seems to me, from Obama's perspective, it made much more sense to simply kill him and avoid the headache of a trial.That being said, there are some questions which can be raised about outright killing Osama.

The first, is it actually legal to simply assassinate someone, even if they are a terrorist? Well in general no, using murder as a means of eliminating political opponents, enemies, or threats is in general illegal. However, one can easily make the case that Osama was in fact an enemy combatant, and this was a targeted strike - no different than the routine drone attacks which we conduct, and which are legal. So in that context, I think one could argue that this was a legal operation - regardless of whether we had Pakistan's consent or not. 

Another important question to ask is, what could we have learned from interrogating Osama? My opinion is probably not much - not without looking bad in the process. I do not think it would be easy to extract any real information from the man without the use of some serious torture, which just opens up a whole other can of worms, and even then it's not likely Osama personally had a great wealth of information about the outside activities of Al Qaeda in my opinion. In that sense, he was worth very little to us alive. What is significant, however, are the computers, storage devices and documents recovered from the compound - which will probably provide much more practical information than any interrogation could.

So all things considered, taking Osama alive probably been much more trouble than it would have been worth, and from Obamas point of view it was the smart move. I think this also helps eliminate some of the backlash that may have occurred with detaining him - months of protests erupting would lead to months of violence in an already violent part of the world, but if he's dead there isn't very much to protest about.