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[Ruggo]

Hang on, the US and Pakistan are close allies, I am sure they would have run it by the Pakis before going in.

Come into the real world Lily. You long for the time when international borders were respected. When was that? Certainly pre Cold War. Pre WWII as well. Probably before WWI actually.

Good times the 1800s.

Are they close allies? There is every indication it is a murky relationship based on convenience.

 

[Jethro Tah]

Here's a good article called The Ethics and Realpolitik of Assassination that opens up a can of worms.

"Evidently the killing—some would say assassination or "targeted killing"—of Osama bin Laden is seen as legitimatising other countries' pro-assassination policies."

 

[lily]

And, if it comes down to it, Britain, France, Italy, Russia and other powerful governments hope America will indulge their own kill-squad adventures with similar approving silences. Of course, if some aggrieved faction in the future seeks retribution through the targeted killing of one of these countries' leaders, that will be raw vengeance, that will be terrorism, that will be an international crime, because, like it or not, that's how it works.
This is the end part of the article.
So if an undesirable kills one of our own that's bad, but if we kill one of his mates it's all good. How does this make sense?

 

[barbarian]

The problem with 'international law' is it exists in a vacuum more or less, and has no connection with the real world. At the end of the day Osama was a mass murderer who no country wanted alive. That is a bit different to a political leader or other state-sanctioned actor. The 'slippery slope' argument that now we are going to see every country entering every other country to pop someone off is total bollocks.

What were the US supposed to do Lily? Pass their intelligence onto the bumbling Pakistani military to get them to carry it out?

 

[lily]

In the last few years Russia have taken out several Chechens in many different locations and the Israelis engaged in the same activities with the most notable and brazen being the hit on the Hamas guy in the UAE when they used fake passports of British and even Australian citizens.
Since 9/11 the US has been active in this activity as well. The slippery slope argument that you mention as you say is bollocks. The reason it's bollocks is because it's already happening.
Osama Bin Laden was the figurehead of a terrorist organisation that brought death and despair to thousands of people. He was not a nice person but I still have a problem with the USA sending troops into Pakistan and then killing 5 people. I especially have a problem with it because only one was armed and he was killed in the first couple of minutes of the raid. From then on they systematically moved around the compound and killed 5 unarmed people.

 

[barbarian]

So would you have killed him? You are yet to answer the question as to what you would do if you were in charge.

This is not about the killing of the other 4, I am against that as well (providing they were unarmed).

 

[lily]

I dont believe in the death penalty. So I would have taken him prisoner. This apparently was not an option.

 

[barbarian]

As much as those are admirable ethics I just don't think it would work in the real world. Ahh well, it's all irrelevant now I suppose.

 

[barbarian]

The best article I have read on Osama was in today's SMH by Boris Johnson:

Osama? Forgetaboutit - Tony Soprano would be proud of this hit

Well, that's handy. We have all just learnt some useful etiquette about how to greet US Navy SEALs arriving unexpectedly in your house when you have just gone to bed. If you find yourself lying there with your wife, just after turning off the lights, and there is a terrific racket from downstairs, you need to follow these essential do's and don'ts.

If the ninja-clad gunmen start charging up the stairs and shooting up your relatives, you are perfectly entitled to stick your head out of your bedroom door and have a gander. If you are so rash as to duck back into your bedroom, you will apparently entitle the SEALs to follow you into the matrimonial chamber, shoot your wife in the leg and then blow you away with a shot in the chest and one in the head.

Yup, it was Osama bin Laden's ''hostile act'' of bullet-dodging that cost him his life, the White House says. As an explanation for killing an unarmed man, this is starting to get embarrassing. I am reminded of the old South African police force, which used to explain deaths in custody by saying that unarmed black detainees had launched savage attacks with their left temples and the smalls of their backs on the steel toecaps of their police guards.

Advertisement: Story continues below So why don't we all just cut the cackle and admit the groaningly obvious. There was no firefight. Osama bin Laden did not cower behind his wife, spraying the US troops from his AK (Andrew Kellaway)-47 like some scene from Call of Duty: Black Ops. That was a lie that went round the world faster than it took the truth to get its boots on, and the truth was that bin Laden hadn't even got his dressing gown on, let alone his boots, before he was dispatched into the arms of Shaitan.

This was an assassination, a liquidation, an extrajudicial killing and a termination with extreme prejudice. Whichever way you look at it, Barack Obama has carried out one of the most effective whack jobs ever seen, and if he doesn't get re-elected I will be amazed. Osama is a has-bin, who sleeps with the fishes of the North Arabian sea, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

But when the President tells us that ''justice has been done'', I think he needs to be a bit fuller in his definition of ''justice''. It was 10 years ago this December, when the net was closing in on bin Laden in Tora Bora, that I wrote a pious piece urging that the mass murderer should be put on trial.

It may be painful and problematic, I argued, but that is the difference between them and us. It's what we're fighting for, I said; and 10 years on I have to admit I can see why the Americans have not found it easy to follow my advice. Having pinpointed his lair, they could hardly have asked the Pakistanis to put him on trial - not when the Pakistani security services seem to be some kind of affiliate of al-Qaeda. They couldn't hold the trial in the Hague, since the US does not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

In an ideal world, they would have put him on trial in New York, the scene of his greatest crime. And then what? A secret trial would have been deemed suspicious; so we would have endured a long, showboating courtroom drama, with lawyers from the school of the O.J. Simpson defence trying to cast doubt on any connection between the accused and September 11, and the cameras of the world would have been trained for weeks on the noble and priestly features of the accused, as he subjected America to some of his finger-wagging denunciations.

Though a New York jury would certainly have sent him down, they don't have the death penalty there - and so his place of incarceration would have become a shrine, the nearby pavements covered with the wax of cretinous candlelit vigils. That is perhaps where the Americans could mount a legitimate argument for what they have done. Bin Laden may represent a threat to US interests, dead or alive, but the reality is he is much less of a threat in his current subaquatic position than he would be in either a courtroom or a prison.

In so far as Obama has a duty to protect America, he almost certainly has the necessary legal cover, provided by Congress, to remove bin Laden from the scene by any means, and that is what he has triumphantly done. As an argument, it is not without its difficulties. If America is to go around indulging in extrajudicial liquidation of anyone who poses a threat to US interests, then we are entitled to wonder where it will end. We may be worried that the enemies of America may be spurred to symmetrical retaliation and that we will be caught up in a cycle of killing.

But it is at least plausible, and emotionally convincing, to say Osama bin Laden was a clear and present danger to America; he had it coming, and the President had him killed. All I ask is that we stop pussy-footing around about ''hostile acts'' and accept that this was an execution.

 

[Elfster]

Boris may come across as a looney in the best sense of that strange, yet wonderful, English trait of weirdness, but he can make sense and elucidate his point in a clarity and style that is sadly lacking by many of our pollies.

 

[Ruggo]

That article pretty much sums up everbodies views and concerns on this issue.