What precedent does Bin Laden's killing set?

If there is a Chinese equivalent of Bin Laden, China can trust us to apprehend or kill him if we are given his location.

I love when moral relativists demand absolute moral standards.

It could all be lies of course, but I just don't see a situation where the White House (Obama +) is lying about whether Bin Laden was killed in the midst of a firefight.

U.S. forces then moved upstairs where they found bin Laden in a room with a woman believed to be his wife — both unarmed, Carney said. She rushed the U.S. forces and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden resisted and was shot and killed, Carney said

Cyclo - Every now and again we agree completely, and this is one of those times.

It is my impression that our military has been attempting to locate and capture him to answer for the murders and prevent more since 2001. I think revenge slips a bit easily from your keyboard. He deserved to be arrested, detained and punished.

As for Pakistan's sovereignty, given that ISI helped Al Qaeda and the Taliban to fight American troops in 2001-2002 i'd say Pakistan had little consideration coming.

More than once the United States has asked for bin Laden to be handed over. ... The Taliban would not hand him over after the September 11th attacks,

which is now being ignored in the the pious and self-congratulatory remarks about due process. That is the concept of hostem humani generis. One could argue that the motives of pirates and international terrorists are not the same, but the effects are the same.

Think of what a trial would have put us through. It would have been a long, painful mess that would have kept his face on the television for months.

This clearly was the best way.

I also submit that in the Muslim world, a belief in our hypocrisy is so firmly enshrined that no such trial would have the effect you assert.

you could have left the word muslim out of that sentence

oralloy wrote:

There is a good body of international law covering wars between a state and a non-state group. The 1977 Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions, for example:

How does the Additional Protocol apply to an international conflict?

The D. C. Circuit ruled Common Article 3 inapplicable to Hamdan because the conflict with al Qaeda is international in scope and thus not a “conflict not of an international character. ” That reasoning is erroneous. That the quoted phrase bears its literal meaning and is used here in contradistinction to a conflict between nations is demonstrated by Common Article 2, which limits its own application to any armed conflict between signatories and provides that signatories must abide by all terms of the Conventions even if another party to the conflict is a nonsignatory, so long as the nonsignatory “accepts and applies” those terms. Common Article 3, by contrast, affords some minimal protection, falling short of full protection under the Conventions, to individuals associated with neither a signatory nor even a nonsignatory who are involved in a conflict “in the territory of” a signatory. The latter kind of conflict does not involve a clash between nations (whether signatories or not). Pp. 65–68.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-184.ZS.html
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/05-184.pdf

oralloy wrote:

Also, the US Congress gave approval for the war before it started:

So what?

joefromchicago wrote:

How does the Additional Protocol apply to an international conflict?

...
Here us how the US Supreme Court put it in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:

We actually are not a party to that particular protocol, but it serves as a handy example to show that non-international conflicts are recognized in international law.

Getting the approval of Congress before you go to war is one of the trappings of war.

The mission was to eliminate Osama, it was never a mission to arrest him.

Mission accomplished, move on.

I didn't say that I found this right, just or it was my preference. I simply stated it was what it was. It's also my observation that the whole world was complicit in this act. No one from the first day the warrant was issue tried in anyway to stop it from happening. There fore, it is my conclusion, that for the most part, the USA did exactly what the world wanted. There will be no world court cases heard on this because the vast majority of people gave a sigh of relief. No anger was shown before when the warrant was first issued, and fully understood as death to OBL. For anyone to say they expected differently is to say they are full of it. This was to be the only outcome. And the wringing of hands in the aftermath is suspect. Where were all the champions of law and order when the fatwa was announced or in the years since.
Quiet.
Believe me, I don't like cowboy justice, but in this case, I don't think there was ever another option and I don't think anyone ever expected a kinder gentler ending. The writing was on the wall.