Obama announcement at 10:30 p.m. - Bin Laden Dead

Ever seen, "The Hurt Locker"?

Every time someone has a cell phone in that movie you want to jump out of your chair.

 

This is the same mentality that caused so many people to cheer 9/11 when it happened.

 

The blogger Matt Yglesias had a post today saying that the most trouble bin Laden could've made for the U.S. now would've been to have surrendered himself to the Pakistani authorities who knew where he was anyway, and were right down the street. Mega-political crisis in Pakistan, big political crisis with no good resolution here. I mean, if Pakistan said they were going to turn him over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution, what could the U.S. do? Try and snatch him and kill officers of the law doing their sworn duty?

 

I guess that works if you think of the people pushing paper in the Twin Towers as war combatants. That's a bridge too far for most sane people, though.

 

Once you start using a blanket "it's war, who cares about the rule of law, what about all our people who have" mentality, you are on that continuum, even if you haven't gone as many steps down it.

 

Is there some kind of qualified immunity under Geneva? As in, as long as we could reasonably say we were following them, then our actions as a sovereign nation or Obama's actions as commander-in-chief are justifiable? For example, that's what GWB was shooting for by getting Yoo to give the thumbs-up to torture.

 

Goering got a trial.

 

Some more red meat for this thread: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05binladen.html?hp.

 

No. It's the mentality that says you can't have a war without killing people. No one has to celebrate it, but duh, it's a reality. If you show up with soldiers and, you know, weapons, you're probably going to use them to kill people.

And as far as I recall, when the Towers were destroyed we were not actively engaged in a war. The buildings didn't contain soldiers or Most Wanted criminals. Just folks.

 

Bin Laden is the initiator of the war and its main aggressor. People are acting like he is being picked up on a felony burglary warrant. He is a war figurehead and the number one priority is to cripple his operation, and if taking him out is the best way to do that then it should be done. All the other comparisons are irrelevant, particularly this one that equates him and the 9/11 victims as equal targets.

 

That's a much better argument than "I bet the families don't care."

 

At least we know that the members of SEAL Team 6 were not a bunch of liberal ROE thinkers:

"1. Kill the goatherds quietly with knives, and throw them off the cliff. 2. Kill them right where they were, and cover up the bodies. 3. Turn them loose, and 'get the hell out of here.'"

"Was I afraid of these guys? No. Was I afraid of their possible buddies in the Taliban? No. Was I afraid of the liberal media back in the U.S.A.? Yes, And I suddenly flashed on the prospect of many, many years in a U.S. civilian jail alongside murderers and rapists.”

“It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life. I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I’d turned into a fucking liberal, a half-axxed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit.”

Marcus Luttrell in Lone Suvivor