What precedent does Bin Laden's killing set?

But the war on terror isn't literally war. It's a metaphor, just like Johnson's war on poverty or Nixon's war on drugs.

It is because the outcome would have been foreordained that i would consider a trial to be hypocrisy designed only to salve the delicate consciences of the morally squeamish.

As i haven't said that justice has been served, i see no reason why i should respond to your self-righteous screed based on the Nuremburg trials.

i suspect the FBI could start rounding up and shooting poor folks in Philadelphia and they'd get standing ovations from at least some of the population

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.

I did not avail myself of Mr. Bush's self-serving mantra about a war on terror. When an individual who claims to speak for an organization which we know to exist (because our CIA helped to create it) takes murderous action against us again and again, i consider that that qualifies as a genuine war--even if Al Qaeda doesn't have any legitimate territorial claims.

When the Russians took Berlin and Potsdam, and sacked and partially burned them, did King Frederick cease to be at war? Did he cease to qualify as the head of a nation?

War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities. Thus, fisticuffs between individual persons do not count as a war, nor does a gang fight, nor does a feud on the order of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. War is a phenomenon which occurs only between political communities, defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states (in order to allow for civil war). Classical war is international war, a war between different states, like the two World Wars. But just as frequent is war within a state between rival groups or communities, like the American Civil War. Certain political pressure groups, like terrorist organizations, might also be considered “political communities,” in that they are associations of people with a political purpose and, indeed, many of them aspire to statehood or to influence the development of statehood in certain lands.

I submit that there is not a significant substrate of nonviolent ideological sympathizers for an organization such as Al Qaeda, and especially no such substrate upon which they can depend.

What do our laws mean to a man who obeyed none.

Setanta wrote:

I did not avail myself of Mr. Bush's self-serving mantra about a war on terror. When an individual who claims to speak for an organization which we know to exist (because our CIA helped to create it) takes murderous action against us again and again, i consider that that qualifies as a genuine war--even if Al Qaeda doesn't have any legitimate territorial claims.

I understand that you feel this way, but on what theory of international law do you believe it's true?

Yes, and perhaps that it is hypocritical and disgusting is actually what i believe. I've not said that justice was served by this killing. I not only don't see that any benefit would accrue from putting him on trial, i have already pointed out that it would provide him what Lash so pointedly described as a bully pulpit, while the outcome was foreordained. It is because the outcome would have been foreordained that i would consider a trial to be hypocrisy designed only to salve the delicate consciences of the morally squeamish. The purpose which has been served has been to kill a high-ranking ememy leader in time of war.

As i haven't said that justice has been served, i see no reason why i should respond to your self-righteous screed based on the Nuremburg trials.

Those who run around claiming culpability for an event ought not to be surprised when they are held responsible for that event. I think that, if anything, the precedent set by this killing is that they will be held responsible.

What Was the Legal Basis for the Bin Laden Strike?
(Terry Beckett, The Blog of Legal Times, May 2, 2011)

The killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is engaging some of the thorniest questions of the United States' post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, including the government's legal justification for carrying out the targeted killing of suspected terrorists.

Lawyers who specialize in national security said today that the United States had several possible legal justifications for carrying out Sunday’s strike. But the operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, raises other issues, too.

John Bellinger III, who served as the State Department’s top lawyer during President George W. Bush’s second term, said the strike was on solid legal footing. Under domestic law, Bellinger said the strike falls in the “sweet spot” of the 2001 congressional authorization for the use of military force against al-Qaeda. Under international law, he said it’s justified by the United States’ right to defend itself and because of the ongoing armed conflict with al-Qaeda.

Bellinger, a partner at Arnold & Porter, wondered whether the Obama administration would nevertheless receive criticism about its use of force.

“The Bush administration was roundly criticized for this idea of a global conflict, as has been the Obama administration to a lesser extent,” he said, “so it will be interesting to see whether [human rights activists] claim this was an illegal use of force against bin Laden in Pakistan.”

Other national security lawyers agreed with the idea that bin Laden’s killing had a firm legal justification.

“The administration using the power it has under the [2001 authorization] and under the Constitution could properly justify this action as a legitimate act of self-defense,” said John Radsan, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law who was an assistant general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2002 to 2004.

Even though Sunday’s attack took place on Pakistani soil without that nation’s prior consent, the Pakistani government has generally gone along with other U.S. operations. And a 1976 executive order that bans assassinations doesn’t apply here, the lawyers said, because the United States is at war with al-Qaeda.

The 1976 order refers to "the kind of assassinations that the CIA attempted in ’60s and ’70s,” said Jeffrey Smith, an Arnold & Porter partner who was CIA general counsel in the mid-1990s. “Here, it’s fundamentally different. Here, Osama led a non-state actor group that had openly directed attacks against the United States.”