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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 ...
You are making a false equivalence between the leader of a group that was responsible for the greatest foreign attack on the US in history and the leader of a group that happened to have religious and constitutional views that the Clinton administration apparently disapproved of. How do you make that leap of logic?
OBL declared war on the US long ago, and backed it up with repeated attacks on our people and our assets - Khobar Towers, the Cole, 9-11, etc. David Koresh never declared war on the US, and while I think he had a little cult going on down there, I never believed the FBI/ATF were justified in going in. So I think your analogy is very flawed.
Just to be clear, the assault on Waco was law enforcement run amok - the assult on OBL was the legitimate exercise of force in the course of waging war.
In this case, I would defend Obama in the same manner that I would have defended GWB for the same actions - as I would have defended Reagan for similar actions - as I would have even defended Clinton had he had the balls to take out OBL when he had the chance. Stop pretending that this is some criminal case that has to handled according to the Constitution and the rule of law. This is a war, and is conducted by much different rules. My opinion of that does not change just becuase I don't like the person in office at the time. It is called moral and ethical consistency, and you might try it some time.
Is writing a bad article legal?
If Nicholson Baker and the other lefties had gotten their wish and GWB had been assassinated, characters like this German legal expert probably would have found arguments to defend it as justified.
Smart Alec, so let try this, do they???
Nice way of tap-dancing around for not answering!!!
Bin Laden deserved to be killed, but the whole incident highlights the hypocrisy of Obama, the Democrats, the MSM and the entire left. Had this happened under GWB’s watch, the same bunch which refuses to criticize Obama would have threatened to drag W in front of the International War Crimes Tribunal. Obama is getting a free pass because the Republicans support the action and the left will not criticize The One under any circumstances.
You are equating the premeditated, calculated murders of three thousand innocent people and the destruction of billions of dollars of infrastructure orchestrated by a psychotic mass murder with a surgical operation that gave that psychotic mass murderer "a brief opportunity to surrender," which he declined, before carefully blowing his head off, minimizing collateral damage as much is was possible?
Is that your position? That both those actions are the same thing and we are as bad as Usama?
Seriously, Zeb?
Here’s the bottom line: immediately after 9/11, Congress authorized the US military to go after the people responsible. OBL was responsible. Taking him out was as defensible as taking out any other enemy military leader. Hell, in war we’ve bombed entire enemy populations.
So, if there’s a murder, you can go murder the first person you think might have done?
"I will make it legal."
Quite so. And, should the UN High Bitch for Human Rights beg to differ at some point in the future, it will be the duty of his successor to sick the Seals on those who would arrest him and to murder any LEOs who resist his repatriation. (Never thought I'd be defending this POTUS, LOL!)
There is a bold, bright line: US citizenship.
Face it, wogs don't have rights. Obama was the preeminent wog. His rights have been erased. What's not to like?
I just asked you a simple ethical question as, do TWO wrongs make ONE right, that was all!!!
BTW, did I call you “names,” please???
Sorry, yes I did, LOL!!!
Was it illegal to attack on another country's territory? Strictly speaking we did not attack a Pakistani national and as per the Pakis, Osami did not live there, hence as per their logic, no one was killed. Ergo, it was perfectly legal.
As far as our government is concerned, our international actions should be ruled by the Law of Nations.
§ 73. The acts of individuals are not to be imputed to the nation.
However, as it is impossible for the best regulated state, or for the most vigilant and absolute sovereign, to model at his pleasure all the actions of his subjects, and to confine them on every occasion to the most exact obedience, it would be unjust to impute to the nation or the sovereign every fault committed by the citizens. We ought not, then, to say, in general, that we have received an injury from a nation because we have received it from one of its members.
§ 74. unless it approves or ratifies them.
But, if a nation or its chief approves and ratifies the act of the individual, it then becomes a public concern; and the injured party is to consider the nation as the real author of the injury, of which the citizen was perhaps only the instrument.
§ 75. Conduct to be observed by the offended party.
If the offended state has in her power the individual who has done the injury, she may without scruple bring him to justice and punish him. If he has escaped and returned to his own country, she ought to apply to his sovereign to have justice done in the case.
Law of Nations, Chapter VI., Emmerich de Vattel
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All in all, it's a very complicated question -- and one that shouldn't be glossed over, in my opinion.
Agreed....but you will find a great many people who will flambe` anyone who mentions the ends may not always justify the means.
Of course none of this applies. The acts of OBL and his followers are extrapolated to all of Islam and they are de facto guilty with no evidence at all /s
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