Bin Laden was killed by the American military a week ago. The CBS program "Sixty Minutes" just presented an interview with President Barack Obama on this. Among other things the president stated that anybody who was concerned about Bin Laden's death should have his head examined.
I am concerned. Not that Bin Laden is dead but the way in which he was killed: he was murdered.
I would have been OK with:
1. an American sniper shooting Bin Laden from a distance;
2. bombs being dropped on his compound; my approval of this includes killing all persons in the compound, including Bin Laden's minor children.
These methods would have been acceptable because they would have minimized danger to American military people; anything to protect American lives during the operation.
There were drawbacks to these methods:
1. certainty that the target had been hit;
2. we would not have retrieved that large trove of data.
However:
1. we did not know there was a large trove of data
2. it was dumb luck that the compound was not booby trapped; it was reasonable to assume that Bin Laden would not have wanted to be taken alive and would have wanted to kill himself and as many attackers as possible.
Reports in the last week have shifted a lot but it is clear that the mission was to kill Bin Laden and that our forces would have taken him alive only if that option was forced upon them by abject surrender.
My problems with this intent to murder Bin Laden:
1. Am I the only person who thinks we could have gotten information from Bin Laden?
2. We forced American military people to train and carry out murder. I am appalled that the U.S. Attorney-General testified before Congress that this murder was legal. No one disagreed with him. I do not see how it can be acceptable to kill someone who is not an immediate threat.
If a criminal is apprehended in the U.S. that person may not be murdered. The criminal may be killed only as a last resort. If a law enforcement officer or civilian murders that criminal, the killer would certainly be tried, no matter how terrible the criminal.
Bin Laden did not deserve better treatment but we Americans deserve better and we should be better than we've shown. This includes the totally unacceptable behavior by entitled DC area college students, none of whom would consider joining the military, who went to the White House and treated the death as if it were a sporting event. There's a danger in treating something important as a sporting event and treating a sporting event as if it were something important.
Virtually no commentators found any fault with any of this in the first week since Osama Bin Laden was killed. Shame on them and shame on us.
