Posted on 05/03/2011 9:03:22 AM PDT by presidio9
US President Barack Obama gets precious few opportunities to announce a victory. So it's no wonder he chose grand words on Sunday night as the TV crews' spotlights shone upon him and he informed the nation about the deadly strike against Osama bin Laden. "Justice has been done," he said.
It may be that this sentence comes back to haunt him in the years to come. What is just about killing a feared terrorist in his home in the middle of Pakistan? For the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and for patriotic Americans who saw their grand nation challenged by a band of criminals, the answer might be simple. But international law experts, who have been grappling with the question of the legal status of the US-led war on terror for years, find Obama's pithy words on Sunday night more problematic.
Claus Kress, an international law professor at the University of Cologne, argues that achieving retributive justice for crimes, difficult as that may be, is "not achieved through summary executions, but through a punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial." Kress says the normal way of handling a man who is sought globally for commissioning murder would be to arrest him, put him on trial and ultimately convict him. In the context of international law, military force can be used in the arrest of a suspect, and this may entail gun fire or situations of self-defense that, in the end, leave no other possibility than to
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
OK, if one wishes to treat this a law enforcement operation, consider this. LEO’s arrive to arrest OBL. OBL points a weapon at the LEO’s. Suicide by cop. Good enough for me.
. What is just about killing a feared terrorist in his home in the middle of Pakistan?
DUH!! Its a war.
He was an enemy combatant.
Pakistan is a terrorist nation that surely knew he was there so screw them and they can get some too if they want......
Since we pay for the World Court, we have nothing to fear. Only the weak nations, such as Serbia, are hauled before that toothless court for defending their territory from invading Muslims.
Since UBL declared war on us, we were essentially at war, so the law professors can kiss my butt re: legality. In war, professor, you destroy the enemy, everything else is supplemental.
Time for Richard M. Obama to state “when the president does it, it is not illegal.”
EVERYTHING is just about it. Let's kill a thousand more of these sick bastards.
WAS 911 LEGAL?
Puhleeze.
But, I do worry quite a bit about the names of those operators getting into the public domain - not so much because of retaliation by terrorists (although that's not unimportant) but because of legal targeting by leftist governments.
I'm thinking of those CIA operators who bagged several people in Italy for rendition. Their names leaked out, and they are now persona non grata pretty much everywhere except Canada - and even a trip to Canada probably isn't without risks.
You can bet the same would happen to these SEALs if their names were leaked.
I suspect Claus Kress wouldn’t have approved my method of ending the “WOT” on Sept 12, 2001.
Once you get past that first question, things start to get very interesting. We may not like to admit this, but there's a very fine line -- or maybe no line at all -- between a Navy SEAL operation in Pakistan and an FBI/ATF raid on a Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
Exactly what I was thinking when I posted this. Thanks to our own clown car media, this obviously isn't going anywhere, but it sure would be fun to watch. OTOH, if GWB were in office, this column would also appear in today's NYT.
Being lectured on the morality of war by a German is as funny as being lectured on military tactics by a French military expert.
Neither makes a bit of sense.
Will they demand he return the Peace Prize?
Again?
Who cares.
He is dead. Good.
I see what you did there...nicely played sir!
DER SPEIGEL, Wir waren nur folgende Aufträge!
Applying the standard that Obama and Holder apply to the Guantanamo detainees, then it was clearly illegal. It was an execution, without trial, in a situation where they very likely could have captured Usama alive.
Applying the sane standard of “enemy combatant” (with which I am in full agreement), then the action was entirely justified whether or not Usama posed a real threat to those involved in the operation. It’s the same standard that would not extend the US Constitution to the Guantanamo detainees and which justified the waterboarding (which, incidentally, were critical in obtaining intelligence which led to Bin Laden’s demise).
Obama is clearly hypocritical on this point. He decided that getting Bin Laden’s scalp would give him foreign policy credibility with the independents and cheers from conservatives, which would more than compensate for any blowback from his loyalists on the left. Remember, he’s a maxist. The ends justify the means. If he has to park his “principles” for political gain, it’s entirely acceptable as long as it further’s the bigger goal of remaining in power.
I haven’t had a chance to hear Judge Napolitano’s take on this. He’s a Constitutional purist who believes enemy combatants are entitled to full protection of the US Constitution, which would prohibit waterboarding - even if that practice would prevent a nuclear attack on a US city.
I am sure the UN will tell us if it was not legal ...and to them I say “ Yea and...”
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