The Obama Administration’s image has been badly dented by the quick revelation that Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot in the face. It looks much more like an assassination and it is now hard to picture how he could have been trying to ‘resist’ apprehension – which would of course have been illegal anyway given that it involved US forces operating in Pakistan.
This probably doesn’t worry many people in the US, but believe me it makes the Obama Administration look very bad overseas to have first said ‘shot while resisting’ and then admit that bin Laden was unarmed.
Prominent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has put it quite aptly when he says it is an irony that the US has given bin Laden what he craved
The last thing he wanted was to be put on trial, to be convicted and to end his life in a prison farm in upstate New York.
What he wanted was exactly what he got – to be shot in mid-jihad and get a fast track to paradise and the Americans have given him that.
It’s an irony that it’s a win-win situation for both Osama and Obama. The latter gets re-elected as president and the former gets his fast track to paradise.
It’s worth looking at the full story about Geoffrey Roberston’s remarks (linked above), because he draws out clearly how bin Laden would have been discredited by being brought before a court. But of course, it wasn’t justice being served, it was politics…
I hope it is useful or interesting to get a foreign perspective on this blog from time to time…
Tips or recs welcome!
Heck we could use a bit more of an international perspective. I don’t get around here very often, but noticed your name and glad to “see” you.
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Easy to offer such an article when one doesn’t balance all the facts of a high risk mission in a foreign country. History offers the other side of a mission gone awry in 1980. Before the compound was entered, one helicopter was lost. There was no quarantee the Navy Seals could get out of Pakistan alive. They left a large number of Bin Laden’s family members unharmed behind in the fortified compound. They did take male occupants prisoner and made off with a trove of computer data HD’s and USB sticks. This was an operation performed within the judicial circumstance of a declared war on Al Qaeda leadership and its members. The world-wide operation by the Al Qaeda terror Group had slaughtered innocent people across the globe from New York, London, Madrid, Marocco, Tunesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Jordan,Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Soviet satellite states and the Philippines. Individual hostages have had their throats slices by the “men of Islam”. No need to gloat or rejoyce, but also no need to second guess as to the outcome of this mission. Most likely Osama Bin Laden was harbored by Pakistani military and intelligence community. It is very possible the Navy Seals used the Ghazi airport facility nearby as a hub for the mission.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I don’t follow the logic of your comment, Oui. I don’t disagree that it was a daring or difficult operation. But that doesn’t excuse a decision to kill rather than capture, and certainly doesn’t explain the Administration’s initial attempt to justify this by saying ‘he resisted’. As for the arguments about having a ‘right’ to kill bin Laden, as far as I know enemy combatants must belong to a nation with which you are at war – you can’t declare war on an organisation (al Qaeda) or a concept like terrorism. And I’m pretty sure the Reuters blogger is wrong about having a right to enter another country to kill someone you perceive as a threat.
Your views seem to reflect your American roots! 😉
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I must have been scarred living in the US.
Nevertheless many professionals and top lawyers in the field of International Law are not unified in their conclusion. See my diary – Order to Kill Was Legitimate According to U.S. Law.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."