Friday, May 06, 2011
With the law
It's disturbing. In the 24 hours following the announcement of Osama's death the definite impression was given that there was an intense fire fight & our assault team, while trying - mostly with success - to avoid shooting noncombatants, shot everyone holding a gun, including Osama, who used one of his wives as a shield (the latter sounded like fiction right off). Then it was revealed that Osama was not armed. Then it came out that only one person, the mysterious "courier," was shooting at our people at all, there wasn't much of a battle & Osama was trapped. So now the operation does come across as a death squad execution, & that is not acceptable. Nor is "enhanced interrogation," doublespeak for torture. I don't mourn Osama. But if we could have captured him at no great risk to our own men, we were morally obliged to do so. I wouldn't have been elated about putting him on trial, which would be a circus, stirring up passions for revenge in us & in bin Laden's supporters. But that's how we're supposed to do it in America; with the law.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Yup. See my post on why killing Osama doesn't mean things change, especially the part about how America is supposed to be a nation governed by laws and yet we've slowly become the nation that ignores laws. And shoot to kill orders coming directly from THIS president, no less. Sad, in my estimation and don't get me wrong, just as Michael Moore states, we are glad OBL is gone, but aren't we supposed to do the American thing, like trial, convict and execute? We've done it before with dictators we've captured for crimes of war, etc. Hell, we did it to Tim McVeigh. I don't recall a hit squad out to kill McVeigh.
Then it's revealed that the CIA had the compound under close observation, so between that & the satellite photos we knew it wasn't heavily guarded. Otherwise there'd have been more outside activity, more people coming & going, & more food being bought locally. The biggest challenge seems to have been keeping the operation secret from the Pakistanis.
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