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 ...
Was flying two planes into a couple of office towers legal? Was flying a plane into the pentagon legal? Was anything al Qaeda ever did legal?
So let’s see if I have this straight. Under Obama’s policies US forces who encounter a terrorist can put two bullets in his brain but are not allowed to pour water up his nose?
He's speaking New German, certainly not the German that his grandparents spoke.
If the question ever gets to the Supreme Court the yes or no answer will be a unanimous YES. However the opinions will be 5 "for" and 4 "for" but reading the opinions without knowing the question you would have no idea what the issue was all about.
I am going to make my reply to this nonsense short and sweet -—
Hey DER SPIEGEL - F.O.A.D.
“Justice, American Style: Was Bin Laden’s Killing Legal?”
As legal as murdering 3,000 unarmed civilians
If it wasn’t, are they going to un-kill him?
Side topic. That got in trouble because they suck., ie used their own credit cards. Not because of any leak.
"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."
meant claus..but who cares..
That is an absolutely relevant point as well. Who was the last Nobel Peace laureate to make a public statement in which he describes authorizing a military mission to kill someone? LOL.
Those wacky Germans. They’re either at your throat or at your feet.
Some dummkopfs have too much time on their hands.
Yes it was. Technically all of the victimes were evil, greedy corporate or Wall Street types working selfishly to generate personal wealth. Their deaths, while tragic, were acceptable under Sharia law. /Obamabot idiot mode OFF
I’m sure Obama sought approval from the UN prior to authorizing the action.
/s
And Lon Horiuchi sends his best wishes, too.
Sorry, but I could not disagree more. There is a line, and it's not "fine" at all. In fact, it's enormous - it's called a border - as in Waco happened inside the territorial border of the US, and bin Laden direct action engagement did not. US service members are not allowed to engage in military operations (with some HIGHLY limited) exceptions, under the terms of Posse Comitatus. No such restrictions apply outside our borders.
US military service personnel are not law enforcement agents. They don't, for good reason, have to abide by the same rules of engagement as a LEO. Not to oversimplify it too much, but they can engage an enemy with lethal force so long as that enemy is not injured or in a place that is internationally recognized as a safe-harbor zone - like a hospital or place of worship (generally), or in the process of surrendering. That doesn't (necessarily) mean that the enemy has to be armed. In fact, it's not against the rules of warfare to engage enemies in retreat.
There are, in the rules of international warfare, rules that prohibit such actions outside the theater of combat. But, IMO, those rules are more than a bit anachronistic as they relate to this current threat. Where isn't the battlefield in this war? And, I clearly think that the quasi-tribal areas of northern Pakistan are well-within those battlefield borders.
Having said that, I think your point is meritorious when discussing US service members engaging US citizens outside the confines of the country, and targeting those citizens for "assassination". That, as a US legal matter, becomes much more complicated. I think reasonable people can disagree about its legality.
Yeah, but we just got tired from waiting for Bin Laden to “off himself” like your dear Fuhrer, Herr Darnstädt.
What is it about WAR that you do not understand?
It looks like you have embraced the bumper sticker philosophy, “What if they gave a WAR and nobody came?”
The problem is that the other side, Muslim jihadists, decided that since they called the WAR, they would keep it up, even if you and your ilk refuse to play.
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