[LINK] bin Laden is dead

[Birch, Jim]

Karl Auer wrote:

> Very few people (relatively speaking, remember - as a percentage of all deaths) have actually ever been killed by terrorists.

True, 9/11 was a fraction of the annual US road toll or the annual disease toll.  However, it's not about statistics.  If it was, killing OBL and a few others is even more statistically irrelevant.  There are questions of the nature of the action, intent, culpability and justice.  Coughing in public or even reckless driving is not morally equivalent to organising 3000 random deaths in a foreign country.

> There was no present need to capture or kill him

He's proven quite elusive.  A Pakistani or joint operation was judged as likely to be compromised, correctly in my non-expert opinion.
 
> at any cost

Cost was relatively minor.  This was quite a neat military operation.  There weren't piles of bodies.

> It cannot have been a desire to uphold the law, because as far as we can tell they broke the law to achieve their aim.

It would be illegal - an unconscionable - to run this kind of operation in a country where rule of law applied reliably.  Pakistan is close to a failed state. It has a weak semi-democratic government and it largely run by the army.  It's security service, or parts of it, have been implicated in Islamic terrorist activity both internally and internationally (in Afghanistan and India, at least.)  The fact that OBL was living "unnoticed" in a middle class area just outside the capital is telling.
 
Don't forget that the US has been conducting independent military "hit" operations in northern Pakistan against Taliban/terrorists targets for some time so it's not quite as radical as it sounds.  This one was different, of course: the target was an international "personality" recognised by just about everyone, there was a high level of secrecy, there was massive subsequent media interest, it was elaborately planned and executed, there was less indiscriminate killing, etc.
 
> The US Government has made enormous political capital out of the killing. So all in all, I think my statement that their motives were "petty gratification and gung-ho patriotic symbolism" is probably pretty much correct.

I'm not into US gung-ho patriotism but I'm glad OBL is gone.  So are most commentators, even those who are regularly critical of US international policy.  

> This does assume that the decision-makers were acting rationally. It is possible that they were not; that they were driven by emotion and a desire for vengeance.

Vengeance and national pride made people dance gleefully in the streets.  It isn't attractive and it probably isn't too helpful.  I guess people have to let of a bit of steam.  Remember that Bush put a massive effort into demonizing OBL.  The Obama Administration have shown remarkable restraint.  

But there is a bigger issue of justice:  Murderers should be brought to timely justice; mass murderers even more so.  As I see it, this matters a lot.

If OBL was denying involvement and living in London, there would be no justification for an international incursion and extrajudicial killing, but he wasn't.   OBL has clearly admitted involvement in the crimes and there is no reason to doubt his word.  He would certainly face the death penalty in the US.  It would have been preferable in many ways to see OBL in court, although that would have had downsides too.  There's a significant risk of additional reprisals or hostage taking resulting in more innocent deaths.  A trial would likely be humiliating to some Muslims and that would have undesirable consequences.

In the end, this result was ok.  It was certainly better that OBL slipping away again.  AQ has crazy, brutal, destructive, antidemocratic aims and the sooner it winds down the better.  Eliminating OBL is a clear step in that direction, even by imperfect process.

- Jim


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