A Seattle resident named Sue writes in response to the time President Obama shot Osama bin Laden in the face:

There is no doubt that Bin Laden was not a popular figure. Maybe this is why no one has uttered a single peep—that I have seen, at least—about the fact that he was killed at point-blank range, and killed without a trial, or any semblance of due process whatsoever.

Has anyone considered what this kind of precedent might lead to?

Is Sue thinking that Navy Seals are now going to be shooting shoplifters in the face? Or that we’re going to institute some kind of law that says if you murder thousands of America citizens, you’ll get shot in the face as an act of war, instead of put on trial like a common criminal? I’m unsure. Anyway, to allay her concerns: A poll!

55 replies on “A Poll About the Implications of Shooting Osama bin Laden in the Face”

  1. We do this all the time, but it’s the first time we’ve admitted it.

    Great job!

    P.S.: Hils, grow a pair and tell the Pakistanis we might lob a few ICBMs their way if they don’t cut it out.

  3. If by “no one has uttered a single peep” she means “discussed to death over and over” then I agree.

  5. I guess a policy of assassination, excuse me, “extrajudicial killings”, is pretty freaking hilarious and only a crazy person would be the least little bit concerned about it, huh?

  6. I think from a legal context it’s pretty upsetting. There is no doubt, none, that he would have been found guilty and then killed. After all he would’ve been tried by people who already hate him. But that’s not the sort of action movie ending that people want. People don’t want to revisit the Nuremberg trials, they want Steven Seagal. What’s the trouble with all of that? Well, we (as a country) are on the way out of power (Hello China!) and now we’re going to have our consideration (or lack thereof) returned to us by our “friends.”

  9. I can’t believe we’re arguing about whether it was okay to shoot bin Laden. Maybe if the SEALs had played soccer with his head in the yard while waiting for the helicopter, we could raise some objections.

  11. Maybe the sort of precedent that allows this to happen and go largely ignored less than a week later:

    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_…

    al-Awlaki has been on the Obama administration’s hit list for some time, but it’s only after the assassination of bin Laden and the overwhelming public support that followed that he felt free to pull the trigger.

    As Glenn rhetorically asks, once you allow a president to unilaterally take a US citizen’s life without due process (one who has not been accused of a crime, no less), what restraints can possibly be applied to that president? There are none that logically can.

  15. We’re blowing up hundreds of innocent men, women and children every month with predator drones–extrajudicial executions at best, systematic mass murder in reality–and none of the psychopaths that run our military and gummit seems to have any problem with it. That’s something to be turbo-pissed about.

  16. Interesting. The question was about having considered the consequences. At least 132 people claim they haven’t even considered the consequences of the action, not if they agreed with it or not. I wonder: were these people among those who called Bush Jr. an incurious dolt?

  17. I can’t believe we’re arguing about whether it was okay to shoot bin Laden.

    The question isn’t “is it okay to shoot bin Laden?” The question is, “is it okay to execute bin Laden without due process?” That’s a reasonable question.

    I’m sure that when we were rounding up Nazi war criminals at the end of WW2, there were plenty of people suggesting that we just execute them because they were bad men who committed atrocities (much grander atrocities than bin Laden could have ever dreamed of). Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

    Vengeance is not as essential to a free society as the rule of law. Unless you ask a neo-conservative or Obama loyalist, in which case we should get to do whatever we want, whenever we want, as long as the innocent civilians being blown to bloody pieces and burned alive aren’t Americans.

  20. @19 This is news to me. I didn’t know taped propaganda counted as incontrovertible proof or a sworn confession or a plea of guilty.

  22. 1) It’s not “justice” if he doesn’t stand trial. It’s not “war” if it’s against a person, not a country (here, Pakistan). Probably the killing of OBL is best described as illegal revenge.

    2) In this case, illegal revenge = meh.

  23. Revenge is not the same as justice. I’m glad he’s dead but the blow-back from this could be a real bitch.

  24. I voted “no” not because I’m incurious but rather because it is not a “precedent.” This is business as usual not a new phenomenon.

    Are people confusing OBL with a head of state?

  25. Paul completely misses an important aspect of Sue’s question: governments of other nations now have a precedent to execute or assassinate Americans accused of crimes without a trial or due process.

  26. I thought that the plan was to bring him into custody if possible. It was only once he fired on the SEALs that they shot him.The fact is he was shot. But I don’t think it was the intent to necessarily execute him on the compound.

    I think that summary executions are wrong and that even people who are obviously guilty should be afforded a trial because if we do not operate within a justice system we are not much better than those we are claiming a moral high ground over. I’m not saying a judicial system is inherently moral or functional either, just that at least there is some kind of system in place beyond the whims of an individual.

    That said, I don’t stay up at night wondering about the moral implications of killing Bin Laden in the field. Maybe that reflects more on me and my ability to live within morally gray areas.

  27. I’m OK with the precedent that if you’re the acknowledged mastermind of a plot that resulted in the death of 3,000+ civilians in a single act and you’re part of an organization that routinely uses martyrdom as a tactic, anyone who comes to arrest you may in fact err to the side of caution and shoot you in the face. This isn’t like a Holocaust parable: “When they came for the terrorist mastermind, I did not speak. And when they came for me, there was no one…wait, there were millions of law-abiding non-terrorist masterminds left to speak. Never mind.”

  28. Ummm… Wait a sec. He was a wanted terrorist leader, with a 25 million dollar reward on his head, and presumed armed. He could have given himself up at any time over the last decade and gotten his trial. It’s not like it was a surprise that someone was going to come looking for him. That he didn’t have a gun in his hand and didn’t shoot at anyone might look bad in retrospect, but no one could assume that he didn’t have explosives and wasn’t trying to blow himself and the Seals up, either. He had publicly vowed death before surrender.

    This wasn’t a civil arrest/execution by the local precinct. This was a military raid by the fucking Navy Seals, fer chrisakes, into a purpose-built fortified installation full of presumed hostiles. This wasn’t a setup. There wasn’t a “throwaway piece”. It wasn’t on civilian ground. It didn’t involve a common criminal.

    Criminal justice had nothing to do with this. You can’t draw a lot of conclusions and precedents from whatever happened.

  29. Unless there’s some proof that they were given a kill-on-sight order, this is not something that’s unprecedented or new. Cops do this all the time. Hello, officer Ian Burk? All you have to do it make the case that he could have maybe been going to reach for a weapon. If it was on his knees with his hands on his head and they shot him in the back of the head, then there might be a case. We’ll never know the reality. While the SEALs probably didn’t have a license to kill, it’s a safe bet they went in there with itchy trigger fingers. We’ll never know the state of mind of the one who shot him. Maybe he really did feel threatened like Bin laden was going for a weapon or had an explosive vest on. Or maybe they were just looking for any excuse, unofficially of course. All Bin Laden had to do was twitch and I’m sure that was good enough. This case isn’t much different from John T Williams case, except unlike Williams, Bin Laden was a known murderer.

  30. Sue’s question is idealistic, and it’s good to ask idealistic questions. But after the question is asked and discussed, it’s time to return to the real world – a place that is far from ideal.

    There are a million tough questions that would have arisen if Bin Laden had been captured instead of killed (#1: where to keep him imprisoned). We live in an imperfect world. It’s nice to try to make it better, but if we fail in that, we shouldn’t be TOO upset or surprised about it.

  31. I have considered the ramifications, and decided I’m okay with it. I’m basically where @27’s at.

    That said, if GWB had gotten on tv and said he’d ignored Pakistan and had special forces go in and kill someone, almost every single one of you–especially Paul Constant–would be shitting yourselves in self-righteous anger. That, too, is worth considering.

  32. @19,
    You know, for something as big as the 9/11 attacks, you’d think our intelligence agencies could dig up something more than easily faked video “confessions” to prove Osama was the mastermind.
    The fact that they couldn’t was the reason why 9/11 was completely left off Osama’s FBI top 10 profile. Unfortunately for too many Americans, when you repeat a lie enough times it becomes true in their minds.

  33. @26, that precedent has been set long ago. See: Israel at Entebbe; Jimmy Carter and Iran (it failed, but still) and to a lesser extent, Reagan and Libya, Bush I and Noriega. I’m sure there are many more, just can’t think of them.

  34. Extra-territorial bombings that killed civilians, “enchanced interrogation” (wink, wink), extraordinary renditions, wiretapping US citizens without warrants, suspension of habeas corpus for those designated as “enemy combatants” without judicial oversight, preemptive attacks – all those precedents still bother me. When it came out that Osama was unarmed, I had a pang of concern for a split second; but when you’re talking about a figure like Osama sheltering in a country of which he’s not a citizen, I have no problem with it at all.

  36. ditto @4
    This is now being used to justify assassination of US citizens without trial. And the administration didn’t wait, but jumped down the first part of the slippery slope. I really didn’t think there was a slippery slope, but clearly there is.

  37. @16 actually, that’s the real war against al-Qaeda you’re referring to, not the sideshows in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m totally in favor of that, quite frankly.

  38. @29 So should SWAT teams have the authority to murder people who aren’t demonstrating a clear threat when they make raids on purpose-built fortified installations full of presumed hostiles?

  39. I am profoundly uncomfortable with US operatives executing someone in cold blood (assuming that is how it went down, which it certainly seems to be.)

    BUT…one has to weigh that against how taking OBL into custody would have actually played out in the real world. As much as I would have liked to see him in a US courtroom facing actual justice (instead of mere vengeance), the fact is that we cannot get our collective shit together to try the low-level guys properly. I find it hard to believe it would have been any easier with bin Laden.

    So…we would have had him in custody, probably at Gitmo or at some “undisclosed location”. Probably indefinitely, probably without trial, and probably forever. In the meantime, you’d have people clamoring to have him tortured for information, you’d have others calling for the first public execution in the US in decades. You’d have every jihadi on the planet eager to kidnap Americans (and probably other westerners) and demand his release.

    So, while I don’t think this makes the order to kill him right, I do understand why the president made the decision he made. I just hope it wasn’t too easy for him.

  40. @40, you’re probably right that if OBL had been captured, he would have been held without a trial forever.

    In order for due process to work, the people overseeing it have to care about it.

  41. The whole shebang is completely constitutional, so what’s Sue’s point? that the line between foreign policy and criminal justice be constitutionally blurry? That’s daft.

  43. ::looks up from a history of Latin America::

    I’m shocked, *Shocked* to discover the US has executed a man w/o due process!

  46. The precedent: if you orchestrate a terrorist attack against the United States, one that kills thousands of innocent people, and then make every effort to facilitate further attacks, then the United States will spare no expense in finding you, even if you’re hiding in a foreign country, and a bunch of Navy SEALs are going to break into your house in the middle of the night and shoot you in the face.

    Yes, I’m entirely comfortable with that precedent.

    Bin Laden was, after a fashion, a military leader, having formally declared war against the United States. It is entirely legitimate within the accepted rules of war to kill an enemy commander even if he is unarmed. Here I’m referring to the shootdown of Admiral Ikoru Yamamoto by American fighter planes during WWII. Yes, it would have been great if he’d been captured alive, but if there was even the slimmest chance of him grabbing a weapon or fleeing the scene (the later case seems plausible since he was shot in the back of the head), then it’s entirely appropriate, nay expected, that soldiers will shoot that individual. Bin Laden wasn’t a drug dealer or an accused murderer in this context, he was an enemy general still intimately involved in an ongoing war against the United States.

  47. Let’s remember that there was only 60%-80% certainty that ObL was at the site. One option was to target the compound with a missle and hope to find evidence of his presence via DNA. Had such a strike been ordered and executed it would have been well within the bounds of military action – and any discussions of whether the man was armed or not would have been meaningless. So it isn’t really that we are debating the legitimacy of executing the man without trial.

    In this specific context it is perfectly reasonable for the CIA and the SEALs to assume it is likely that ObL has planned some kind of booby trap – the entire compound was built with the express purpose of protecting him from military exercise. They may have decided that they were going to give him absolutely no benefit of the doubt.

    One of three things happened then. Either 1.) Obama ordered the SEAL team to kill on sight, 2.) Obama ordered the SEAL team to capture if possible or kill if necessary with broad freedom to exercise judgement, or 3.) Obama ordered the SEAL team to capture if possible or kill as a last resort but someone between Obama and the SEAL who shot him decided that our national interest was best served by subverting any possible due process and making it a kill mission.

    We really have no way of determining which of these occurred. It seems as though anyone questioning the action is assuming that the first occurred. Frankly, I think the second is most likely, but I will acknowledge any of these is possible. The third seems highly unlikely to me.

    But let’s assume that the first did occur, is it then appropriate (justified) for the administration to emphasize that this was a capture or kill mission when it was not? Given that international public opinion goes hand in hand with national security, I would say probably yes, even though I’m sure Kant would disagree.

  49. @47, Yomamoto was an essential leader in a vastly powerful military force of a sovereign nation with which we were in a state of war, and he was in the process of guiding operations that were killing thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers. Yomamoto was actively at work and in enemy territory when he was killed. OBL and Al Qaeda are to the Japanese military what the local little league team is to the SF Giants, and Pakistan isn’t (technically) enemy territory.

    A better example would be when the U.S. and Israel found and captured Nazi war criminals who were guilty of crimes dwarfing those of OBL. Those criminals were tried before the world and executed according to the rule of law.

    Now, I actually think this argument is relatively academic. The argument that isn’t and yet isn’t really occurring, is whether or not we should continue to implement foreign policies which regularly and predictably result in the violent deaths of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children without any increase in U.S. security (actually, the opposite).

    That’s a slog poll I’d like to see.

  50. @29 Said it best but here are a few facts to remember before anyone starts to get regretful in a “Should we have bombed Hiroshima?” way:

    1. OBL was responsible for the death of thousands, worldwide.

    2. He spoke often about killing thousands more or condoning similar mass-casualty events.

    3. Most images from the last twenty years of his life feature him with weapons and using those weapons.

    4. He was known to associate with people who carried a lot of weapons.

    The only way he could have survived would involve being frozen in carbonite.

    The SEALS might be said to have overreacted if they’d stuck their dicks into the bullet holes after they’d shot him.

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