I agree – Bin Laden was executed by the US government as vengeance for the 9/11 attacks. There are many practical arguments for killing instead of capturing such a target. The moral argument is moot, if you even believe morality exists for nation states (I don’t). This is particularly so for a great power, since international law is effectively irrelevant. Wringing hands and complaining about how enlightened societies don’t do such things is amusingly naïve.
What I find surprising is that the SEALs took a good 30 minutes or so to work up to the floor where Osama was, according to what I read. Why didn’t the guy have a gun in his hands? He wasn’t surprised. He had to know something was going on.
The operation took that long but it doesn’t mean it took that long to get OBL. They could have gotten to him in 5 minutes and then spent 25 rummaging for intelligence or other targets.
Is Mullah Omar “extremely evil”?
The intel community is sharply divided over his skateboarding prowess.
The implication there, in the hypothetical scenario of a false confession in the face of continued accusation, is that he could have stopped it. Short of suicide or turning himself over, that’s unlikely and a considerably unjust burden to put upon the accused.
They can criticize people who feel that way(no proof Bin Laden ‘did it’) all they want. The truth is that when people give up on the legal process, then those same people lose the ability to claim “he did it” with any credibility.
What all those people are doing is merely parroting what they’ve been told. They were told Bin Laden was responsible, that’s good enough for them. Bin Laden could have released an immediate statement denying involvement and it would not have mattered one bit.
It sort of reminds me of that Hollywood bank robbery a few years ago. The second bank robber was shot multiple times and left to bleed to death on the street with no paramedics allowed to treat him. It was because wink wink there might have been other gunman lurking around so it wasn’t safe…except for it was safe for everyone else wandering around that guy.
The cops did that because they knew they could. After what those guys pulled, they knew there would be no public outcry over anything that happened to them, and there wasn’t. No one gave a crap that the cops did that to him, if anything most people felt like he deserved it and it might help discourage others from doing something similar. Bin Laden, from the first moment he was named as responsible, was in the same position. No matter what the law says, the government knew they had a free hand to do anything, literally anything, to him and the general public would just say “YEAH!”
Darlin’, I know everyone has told you again and again to go to bed when you take your ambien and stay away from the computer, but man, the ambien walrus has you using a racial slur. I am sure no one thinks you meant anything by it, but dude. That happened.
This owns
Of course I would not be nonchalant about either Dick Cheney or Hillary Clinton being killed by Iraqis, Al Qaeda or whomever. I’d concede that folks doing the killing sincerely believed that Cheney was extremely evil, and like all infidels he needed to be killed. For all I know maybe they are right and we really are the great Satan, Allah demands our death and virgins await the martyrs. Certainly Cheney is more their sworn enemy than you and his death would be a great victory for them. I see nothing illogical about trying to kill people who’s belief system is antithetical to ones own, and persist in using violence to impose it. Depending on your world view either killing Bin Laden or Cheney is a morally good action. The only way to come another conclusion is if you believe that Bin Laden or Cheney can be talked out of the future use of violence. And I say good luck with that.
Imagine you wake up one morning on a business trip and see your name being flashed on the TV as being the primary suspect in the bombing of an IRS building that had killed dozens. You have had previous dealing with the IRS including assaulting an IRS agent. Just the other night at your favorite bar, you were venting about the IRS and threatening to blow the damn building up. The TV says there is a statewide manhunt for you. You think that turning yourself in is an unjust burden?
From the comments:
Yeah, there’s an awful lot of crazy going on in the comments thread there.
I’m sorry, Chris, where do you teach again? Oh thats right…you don’t. Stop pointing fingers at intelligent discourse, have another drink and let the meds kick in. Chomsky has more class and intellect than you have hairs on your head. Which I suppose isn’t a difficult achievement.
Chomsky doesn’t actually teach either, when it comes to all his crazy socio-political ideas, right?
In terms of his actual academic achievements, I had thought that was totally limited to linguistics… that’s how I originally encountered him, prior to learning that he was this crazy political figure.
I mean, he’s got lots of ideas about stuff… but those ideas don’t stem from any kind of formal education in those areas, do they?
Like I said, I had encountered him academically through his work in linguistics… and I had thought that was what his academic focus was on. Always had the impression that all of his political activism was just kind of something he did on the side, although I’ve noticed that people seem to think that his distinguished academic career is actually in something like political science.
I guess CIA will have access to Bin Laden’s widows according to CBS.
I guess waterboard fun fun fun time for 3 wives?
Man, I like Hitchens but he sure uses a lot of words to not say much at all.
Example:
So is one to assume that [Noam Chomsky] has pored through the completed findings of the 9/11 Commission? Viewed any of the videos in which the 9/11 hijackers are seen in the company of Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Read the transcripts of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker”? Followed the journalistic investigations of Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, or John Burns, to name only some of the more salient? Acquainted himself with the proceedings of associated and ancillary investigations into the bombing of the USS Cole or indeed the first attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in the 1990s?
I dunno Christopher, are we to assume that? You tell me! If you are trying to say that Chomsky is wrong on the facts, tell me what the facts are, and show me the evidence that supports those facts. Simply listing sources is rhetoric, not argument. Moreover, the few specifics Hitchens brings up amount to hearsay evidence (transcripts of the trial of Moussaoui, whose mental state at the time of trial could best be described as extremely erratic) and evidence of guilt by association (the fact that 9/11 terrorists are seen in the same company as Osama Bin Laden does not logically lead to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for their actions).
Moreover, Hitchens appears to have either missed or ignored Chomsky’s central point, which is not that Osama is innocent of terrorism or is unconnected with 9/11, but that "[i]n societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial.” Hitchens says: “it is remarkable that [Chomsky] should write as if the mass of evidence against Bin Laden has never been presented or could not have been brought before a court”. Well, to the best of my knowledge the evidence against OBL hasn’t ever been brought before any court, much less a public one.
Then Hitchens moves on to complain about Michael Moore, who may be an idiot but that surely cannot be blamed on Chomsky.