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…