Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
As people here no doubt know I am quite opinionated and rather definite in my views, perhaps to a fault some might say. In this piece though I must admit that I have mixed feelings as to what is right and what is wrong, in the issue I write about. The recent thread on this blog: Trophy Terrorist: Obama Suggests Romney Would Not Have Ordered the Killing of Osama Bin Laden: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/04/30/obama-suggests-romney-would-not-have-killed-osama/ engendered a lively debate on the propriety of summarily executing a purported mass murderer. In my mind as I viewed the back and forth of the thread, including my own comments, I began to think of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway for killing 77 people, the fact that he was using his trial for publicity to advance his racist cause in Norway and that at worst he was facing only twenty-one years, though it “might” be extended for life.
Had Osama Bin Laden been captured and stood trial it would have created a worldwide sensation. It would have had to have been televised, since the clamor for an “open” trial would have been deafening and I would have added my small voice to the clamor. The necessity of fairness to the defense would have followed the same dictum, since a publicly perceived unfairness would result in a U.S. public relations disaster, for obvious reasons. Therefore, this trial could have been used as a stage for stirring up the “terrorist” pot and perhaps as a great recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. My question is: faced with such potentially explosive results from a trial, is the government justified in simply killing to preclude a greater evil? To be honest I’m not completely certain where the equities of these situations lie as I’ll explain.
Let us first look at a bit of history whose horror and ending we all know: In late 1923 Adolph Hitler initiated the “Beer Hall Putsch” an attempt at coup d’etat that resulted in the death of four police officers. He was arrested for treason a month later. His trial in February 1924 was a German press sensation and provided him a perfect forum for spreading his hateful views. Convicted, by his own admission, he was released in December 2004 by order of the Bavarian Supreme Court, over the prosecutor’s objections. The affair made Hitler into a national celebrity and gave legitimacy to his NDSAP (soon to be NAZI) party, which garnered 6% of the vote in the May 1924 elections. In prison Hitler completed the first volume of “Mein Kampf”, only adding to his mystique. Would history have been different if Hitler was truly punished for being the man behind for murders and treason? Did Hitler’s trial and subsequent release set him on the path of destruction of millions, himself and the German people, serve the cause of justice? To familiarize yourself with the facts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Hitler
In the Norwegian case of Mr. Breivik, we have a believer in racial purity and Fascism. He readily admits to the murder of seventy-seven people, mostly teens and believes he was justified in doing so. He purports to be a “writer”. The parallels with Hitler are so close as to convince me that Breivik is trying to emulate Da Feuhrer in word and deed.
“At the end of the indictment, he told the court: “I acknowledge the acts, but not criminal guilt – I claim I was doing it in self-defence.”
Breivik has already confessed to the attacks on 22 July. In the car bombing outside government buildings in Oslo, eight people were killed and 209 wounded.
He killed 67 people and wounded 33 – most of them teenagers – in his shooting spree at the youth camp on Utoeya. A further two people died by falling or drowning.
At a court hearing in February, Breivik said his killing spree was “a preventative attack against state traitors”, who were guilty of “ethnic cleansing” because they supported a multicultural society. His lawyer has said his only regret is that “he did not go further”.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17724535
The similarities of intent and action are strikingly familiar, however, Breivik far surpassed Hitler’s initial act. What effect will Breivik have on the future of Norway? Is any state in Europe, or indeed the entire world immune from racial/religious xenophobia? I think the sad truth of human history, in many more instances than I have space to cite, is that hatred for the other is a common rallying point for many human beings and a common tactic used by sociopaths on their road to power.
So now we come to the case of Osama Bin Laden, purportedly the person responsible for the mass murder of 9/11 and the head of the purportedly “most dangerous” terrorist organization in the world. I have to admit that there are questions as to whether Bin Laden was the 9/11 mastermind he was purported to be. There are suspicions that 9/11 was an inside job, that it was the work of Saudi intelligence, that Israel was behind it and/or that some other entity did it, but it was pinned on Bin Laden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_September_11_attacks and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13664.htm
When I originally started to do this piece I was of a mind to believe that the evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt, or at least his self-servingly taking credit for it, was overwhelming. This belief held despite the fact that I can also believe from other readings that 9/11 was the result of the fulfillment of the PNAC’s plan of needing a large scale American tragedy, to implement their plan of re-making America an Empire in the mold of Rome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century My thoughts and feelings about 9/11 are both confused and skeptical, have been since it occurred and in its horrid aftermath. Nevertheless, I continued to view Bin Laden as a bad guy and still do now. Yet should he have been killed, as he was, or should he have brought to trial?
That confusion leads me back to where I began. We see in the case of Hitler that his trial ultimately became his triumph. Only the future will tell us if Breivik’s trial and the maximum sentence he faces, will elevate him to the fame and power he obviously craves, or a martyrdom that will also ultimately serve his cause. The question than devolves to what does a country do when political radicals attempt to use its own laws against it by turning a judicial system into a platform for publicity and recruitment? Also what does a country do when outside forces can pose it a security threat of broad magnitude?
One position on that question has seemed to be a tenet of American foreign policy for many years, stemming from World War II and the “Cold War”. History, however, shows that this strain of thinking goes much further back, perhaps to “The Shores of Tripoli”. That position is that America leadership should act unilaterally to stem any threat to the country, even if the threat is only to the business of a large corporation, such as United Fruit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company . From that thinking assassination and fomenting revolutions in foreign countries is acceptable and preferred. A Bin Laden trial would be fraught with danger in its aftermath and its preclusion would therefore be justifiable. We must remember that after 9/11 and it shocking affect on all of us, outright murder and/or torture of terrorists became an open topic of discussion, with our mass media leading the clamor and bestowing respectability on acts that used to require “plausible deniability”.
This way of thinking had led to a bi-partisan consensus during the “Cold War” and now remains as a belief of the majority of “serious” foreign policy/military experts, from all ends of the political spectrum. President Obama no doubt believes in this foreign policy/military dicta. That belief is no doubt reinforced by all the “experts” that surround him, with a possible few exceptions. To the “experts” the world of “24”, Jack Bauer and nuclear bombs exploding in Los Angeles are all too real. Truthfully though, when you see someone like Breivik, who can blame leaders for not wanting to take the risk of having so many killed on their watch? This thinking too, is arguably common wisdom accepted by a large majority of the American people, conditioned to its “truth” for many, many years. Whether we approve, or not, there are viable points to be made in favor of this strategic belief and one must exercise caution in demonizing those who honestly hold them.
My own belief is that the “pre-emptive” strike theory of dealing with situations like this diminishes legitimate government’s separation from those who would use terror to de-legitimize it. The aftermath of 9/11 has shown that whoever pulled it off succeeded in drawing America closer to becoming a “police state” and in many places (Arizona per chance?) we are emulating the decried USSR practice of limiting the mobility of its citizens. To allow our government to behave extra-legally will only diminish our own freedoms and blur the line between what is political protest and what is terrorism/revolution. I must stand inevitably then with the side of the issue that demands on lawful government action in the face of purported threat. While staking out this position I have to admit that I was an avid watcher of “24” and fan of Jack Bauer, in a fictional way given the internal logic of the series the “extra-legality” made sense. We don’t live in the internal “reality” of a TV show, no matter how surreal human life is and so I must stand by my beliefs ultimately, without the absolute certainty of their correctness.
I can never know though what it is like to be a President, with all those “experts” around you making each situation into a crisis that must be dealt with immediately, without time to really examine all possibilities. JFK faced that in “The Bay of Pigs” and the “Cuban Missile Crisis” and in both instances, to his everlasting credit, rejected the views of his “experts”. JFK also wound up murdered under circumstances that are even suspicious today. In President Obama’s case he was surrounded by “experts”, assuring him with their “intelligence information” that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and they had located him. I’ve no doubt the orders given to Seal Team 6 were to capture him “if possible” but that maintaining their own safety was a priority. I the sense of “plausible deniability” one could question how the team leaders interpreted that order. Had Bi Laden been captured and put on trial, what forum would have been used? What are the “national security” considerations that such a trial would have raised? How would the “experts” interpret the threat engendered by the trial?
When we compare President Obama to JFK, we must understand that JFK was a man who had been through active combat and was well aware that many times military experts are wrong. He was the son of a father who had very skeptical views of government experts and he was truly his father’s son in that respect. Barack Obama had no military service and served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is not only spoon fed self serving intelligence, but is also made to feel a part of deeply held secrets. I doubt he was, or is as skeptical of his “experts as was JFK. Then too, although a myth, Democrats are perceived as being chary of using America’s power and in a political sense are attacked for it constantly. Sadly, too often Democratic Presidents feel they have to go overboard to prove their “patriotism”, as defined by the jingoism of the Republican “Chicken-hawks”.
There are many sides to this issue and while I have my beliefs to which I’ll adhere, they are beliefs that I can’t state with the total authority of certainty. Where do you stand?
The following links were also used in putting this together and you might find them of interest:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17770991
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/binladen_10-29-04.html
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8866-finding-bin-laden-the-truth-behind-the-official-story
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger.
“I have in the works a more in-depth response to Mike Spindell’s blog posting, but just to boil it all down to the real issue here:……………Do we have mere “parchment provisions” or do we have living and just laws?”
“Next, with all due respect, I would like to dispose of Mike Spindell’s unfortunate analogy to the infamous Beer Hall Putsch trial of February 6, 1924:”
“Now, does Mike Spindell really expect an American courtroom — any conceivable American courtroom — to resemble the Bavarian travesty of a legal proceeding described above? I can hardly think so.”
“One should always take great care with Adolph Hitler analogies, lest they illustrate not what one intends to say with them, but something quite disastrously to the contrary.”
“Any argument that America could not afford to try Osama Bin Laden does not hold a drop of water.”
Michael Murry,
I really don’t mind when people take issue with the stuff I write. Life has taught me that I’m not always correct in my views and can learn much from others critiques of my opinions. What does bug me though is when people invent “straw men” arguments to disagree with me. “Straw men” possibly created by their own lack of comprehension of what I’ve written; superficial skimming influenced by their own pre-judgments and/or simple disingenuousness to stroke their own egos by seemingly taking me down a peg.
I’ve read just about everything you’ve written here since you’ve become a regular commenter. You and I share a great deal in our perspective of this country. Unfortunately, you might not be familiar with all that I’ve written, since admittedly it is a lot of material going back many years. Had you done so I think in this instance you might not have been so challenging and so off the mark in your critique. Should you care to peruse my previous writings all you need do is use the internal search engine under Jonathan Turley’s picture and type in: Mike Spindell.
My belief in short is that the .01%, Multinational Corporations and the MI Complex are trying and succeeding in re-making the U.S. and the rest of the world into a Feudal Corporatocracy. That this effort is less about politics and more about the hunger for power. The only possible hope is in the fact that the inflated egos of the various elite parties keep them from fully cohering and that is where possibility of change lies. A corollary to this is that people have become convinced of certain false memes in foreign policy and that includes the “experts” themselves. One must understand their thinking if it is to be undermined. This is implicit in all my writings and in this particular piece. I am a psychotherapist and so I tend to try to understand the mindset of those whose positions I disagree with. People with power do evil things, but never think of themselves as evil when they do them. From their perspective they are doing good. Unless one understands this nuance, all efforts at change are doomed to failure, because one must understand the motivations of their opposition.
While I share much of your political analysis, I also think that you are far too intensely smitten with the correctness of your own viewpoint and that closes you off from material that you read superficially. If you look at this paragraph below, quoted from my piece, you might understand where I stand vis-a-vis Bin Laden’s killing. Were you to re-read the entire piece you would also see that I am suspicious of Bin Laden’s presumed guilt, but it’s up to you to do so or remain ignorant of what I was trying to express.
From the piece above:
“My own belief is that the “pre-emptive” strike theory of dealing with situations like this diminishes legitimate government’s separation from those who would use terror to de-legitimize it. The aftermath of 9/11 has shown that whoever pulled it off succeeded in drawing America closer to becoming a “police state” and in many places (Arizona per chance?) we are emulating the decried USSR practice of limiting the mobility of its citizens. To allow our government to behave extra-legally will only diminish our own freedoms and blur the line between what is political protest and what is terrorism/revolution. I must stand inevitably then with the side of the issue that demands on lawful government action in the face of purported threat.”
@Michael Murry: The defendant who pleads “not guilty,” for his part, has no interest in saying anything at all, and any competent counsel would advise him to just remain silent while the prosecution tries to do its worst.
While I agree with your conclusion, the above statement is false. Defendants have every right to provide an alternative explanation for evidence that appears damning.
If yours are the only prints on the gun, you saw it at the scene and picked it up, and because you have been trained in gun safety, your hand fell to hold it naturally; anything else would be dangerous. It must have been wiped clean before it was dropped. The blood on your hands was from a panicked attempt to revive the victim. Etcetera.
Also, defendants that know they are going to be convicted do not act in their own best interest and just sit there. On the contrary, if the verdict is certain, their best interest is served by using the court room as a communications platform, perhaps the last they will have.
Osama bin Laden would have the right to take the stand. His defense attorney, during questioning, could let him make speeches, which might be challenged for relevance, but would probably be allowed.
Unlike the Beer hall, the judge and prosecutor would not allow Osama great leeway. We have contempt of court that can interrupt proceedings, for weeks if necessary. We do not have to allow live feeds; for national security purposes we can close the courtroom to the public (as we do in trials over Top Secret information).
I believe Osama bin Laden was entitled to a trial, I also believe that like anybody else, he should have had the right to say anything he wanted to say, to the jury, to defend himself, at length if it was relevant. The point of the trial is NOT to defend one’s self to the world or public at large, and the defendant does not HAVE the right to use his trial as a grand stage. The public at large is represented by the judge and twelve jurors, and those thirteen are the only citizens he has any need or right to reach.
Moving right along, one could consider two other illustrative cases that have more bearing on the trial of Osama Bin Laden that never took place because his extra-judicial murder by President Obama rendered it forever moot.
Accused of a crime, Charles Manson had the right to try and manipulate the American legal system to his advantage — if he could. He failed, and remains in prison to this day. Accused of a crime, Timothy McVeigh had the right to try and manipulate the American legal system to his advantage — if he could. He failed, and the government executed him. In any event, the number of persons who perished during commission of the respective — and until proven otherwise, only alleged — crimes had no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the protections/opportunities provided to individuals by the Constitution would extend to the accused. They did then and do now.
Yet despite what even real murdering Americans could not do to hijack the legal system in their own interests, any Muslim defendant would face even more impossible odds of prevailing against the rigged system. As Glenn Greenwald put it recently:
“if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, your conviction in a federal court is virtually guaranteed, as federal judges will bend the law and issue pro-government rulings that they would never make with a non-Muslim defendant; conversely, if you’re a government official who abused or otherwise violated the rights of Muslims, your full-scale immunity is virtually guaranteed. Those are the indisputable rules of American justice. So slavish and subservient are federal judges when it comes to Muslim defendants that if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, you’re probably more likely at this point to get something approximating a fair trial before a Guantanamo military tribunal than in a federal court; that is how supine federal judges have been when the U.S. Government utters the word “terrorism” in the direction of a Muslim or any claims of “national security” relating to 9/11.”
So I say again and should not have to repeat: Any argument that America could not afford to try Osama Bin Laden does not hold a drop of water. And it defies credulity even more to assert that 25 heavily armed goons could not capture a surprised, undefended, unarmed man and deliver him for interrogation and trial in America. Only the desire to politically exploit an invisible dead Muslim corpse explains what the Obama administration has done here. And that the troops in the field would proudly display their own gruesome body-part trophies testifies to nothing so much as their desire to emulate their Commander-in-Brief.
Next, with all due respect, I would like to dispose of Mike Spindell’s unfortunate analogy to the infamous Beer Hall Putsch trial of February 6, 1924:
“From beginning to end [Hitler] dominated the courtroom. Franz Guertner, the Bavarian Minister of Justice and an old friend and protector of the Nazi leader, had seen to it that the judiciary would be complacent and lenient. Hitler was allowed to interrupt as often as he pleased, cross-examine witnesses at will and speak on his own behalf at any time and at any length — his opening statement consumed four hours, but it was only the first of many long harangues” — William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Now, does Mike Spindell really expect an American courtroom — any conceivable American courtroom — to resemble the Bavarian travesty of a legal proceeding described above? I can hardly think so.
In a real court proceeding, as I understand such things, the accused would have the opportunity to plead “guilty” or “not guilty.” If the defendant pleads “guilty,” the court can just accept that plea and move on to sentencing. Only if the defendant pleads “not guilty” — invoking his presumption of innocence — would the court then accept evidence and argument by the prosecution which alone bears the burden of proving the defendant guilty. The defendant who pleads “not guilty,” for his part, has no interest in saying anything at all, and any competent counsel would advise him to just remain silent while the prosecution tries to do its worst. Nothing even remotely resembling the Beer Hall Putsch trial need occur in any competently run courtroom proceeding. Only by having a trial can one observe how the prosecution, defense, judge, and jury conduct themselves — and what verdict and sentencing, if any, emerge as a result.
One should always take great care with Adolph Hitler analogies, lest they illustrate not what one intends to say with them, but something quite disastrously to the contrary.
Once again, in an effort to keep the essential point at issue clear, consider:
In a courtroom scene from the movie Fracture, a man accused of attempting to murder his wife insists on his right to represent himself in the forthcoming legal proceedings. The presiding judge asks the prosecuting attorney (dressed in a fancy dinner jacket) if he has any objections.
Prosecuting attorney: “This is going to turn into a circus.”
Judge: “I appreciate your concern for the dignity of the court, 007, but unfortunately, the man is a tax-paying citizen and entitled by the Constitution to try and manipulate the legal system just like everybody else.”
The Constitution stipulates how the government must treat accused persons and despite Mike Spindell’s no-doubt-genuine concern for the dignity of the American legal system, if American courts cannot deal with the likes of Osama Bin Laden then why should anyone consider their manifest cowardice “dignified”?
I have in the works a more in-depth response to Mike Spindell’s blog posting, but just to boil it all down to the real issue here:
“What then … is the use of … a provision, if it cease to operate the moment there is an inclination to disregard it?” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 26
Do we have mere “parchment provisions” or do we have living and just laws?
Karl Friedrich,
Yes!
ps (I don’t vote lesser of evils. Won’t be complicit in voting for evil)
@Karl Friedrich: I, for one, will not vote for Obama as the lesser of two evils. Neither will my wife, and we were quite enthusiastic about his campaign while it was happening, and contributed a significant amount of money. He won’t get a dime, or a vote, from us this time around.
That is one thing certain. The rest of my vote is up in the air.
Rafflaw: At least 8 out of 10 of the regular, everyday posters here will be voting for Obama as “the lesser evil” and you know it — even though Turley clearly won’t be after his scathing op-eds re: Holder’s NW University speech some weeks ago.
Hypothetically speaking it goes without saying that if you could somehow poll every adult on this planet Bin Laden wouldn’t be considered the number one bad guy which is strictly a Northern hemispherical notion born of the commercial press. I doubt many Iraqis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Sudanese, Somalis, Yemenis, Algerians, Palestinians or even American Indians see things through the same narrow minded eyes of a college educated white guy.
No, I tend to agree with those tee shirts & posters I used to see around 2007 that read: “World’s #1 Terrorist” and showed a picture of GW Bush’s idiotic mug. In fact why don’t you just type into a Google search WORLD’S #1 TERRORIST and see what you find?
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=hts4&oq=world%27&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS415US416&q=world%27s+%231+terrorist+image&gs_upl=0l0l1l714972lllllllllll0&aqi=g4s2&pbx=1
Fact is there’s not a single image of Bin Laden!
Have you ever seen the posters or tee shirts that read: “Homeland Security – Fighting Terrorism Since 1492”
http://www.amazon.com/Homeland-Security-Fighting-Terrorism-T-shirt/dp/B005FRHMKO
What do you think people who enjoy that poster or who wear that shirt think about whose the #1 bad guy in the world?
It’s a shame how many erstwhile progressives on this blog let the commercial press define their worldview & narratives which in reality are alien concepts to the vast bulk of humanity, that brown 70% of the world’s toilers living in abject poverty in the Southern hemisphere thanks to the uneven trade arrangements, crushing debt & manipulated commodities markets engineered by the IMF, World Bank and other “little Eichmann’s” working in places like WTC?
Clearly their notions of who are the biggest bad guys in the world aren’t the same as yours, particularly when it comes to judging the lone murdered brown guy who allegedly smashed in the 2 big buck teeth of US Imperialism in a single day.
Res ipsa loquitur
Plumb any one of the above, including Rahm, and you will get the same “yawn” when it comes to extracting information from humans via torture, or using bin Laden’s assasination for political gain. Rahm never met a law he wouldn’t make subservient to “Presidential Authority”, and that gets people killed.
@AY: Personally, I think Obama is more akin to Cheney & Rove; without limits on what he is willing to do, and just better looking and more personable. Obama surrounded himself with political operatives willing to follow that lead, like Rahm, like his financial advisors, justice department, CIA and FBI and military personnel.
Obama lied to us as a populist and we fell for it, and I suspect we will fall for it again. In the meantime, he has done nothing but destroy the rule of law and advance the Imperial Presidency, protect the criminals in the military, in industry, on Wall Street, and in the intelligence community. Obama is overseeing the destruction of everything America stands for, but he does it with a winning smile, fine rhetoric, and all the promises we want to hear, even if he is working behind the scenes to make sure they never come true.
So yeah, Obama surrounded himself with dickish people, liars and operatives. That was Rahm’s advertised strength in fact, he was the House savant on rules and procedures and knew everybody and their pressure points, that was the glowing reference, Rahm could play the House like a fiddle.
And, as it turned out and with what leaked in retrospect, I believe it. I truly believe that all the missteps and setbacks and everything else in the House and Senate, when it came to the health care bill, were the symphony of Rahm Emanuel, his masterwork, a grand facade to deflect any blame for the pathetic result away from Obama and place it squarely on those that were retiring and/or could get rich from it; like Joe Liebermann with his healthare-lobbyist wife. We know now that Rahm himself recommended recruiting Liebermann for the bad-guy to kill the public option, and Rahm himself went and did that with Obama’s approval, because Obama had already promised the insurance lobbyists there would BE no public option.
Rahm’s reward was the boost he needed to move up in power, from a Representative with little power (he was caucus chair though), to Chief of Staff with reflected power, to Mayor of Chicago, the third largest city in the country, with real unitary, final-decision powers of his own. A good position to graduate to Governor, then run for President.
Bailouts, the Fed, the Treasury, the DOJ, the drug war, civil liberties, even during the Gulf Oil spill, Obama has been throwing us under the bus for four years, and I assume he knows exactly what he is doing and things are going exactly according to plan.
Tony,
So what are you saying, that Obama surrounded himself with dickish people?
@Swarthmore: Agreed on Rahm. Rahm is dickish, Cheney and Rove are true snakes in the brain, literally lethal kind of evil.
Since when is Rahm Emanuel the equivalent of Dick Cheney or even Karl Rove for that matter? I am not a fan of Rahm anymore but he is not in their league.
The reason Bin Laden was killed instead of captured is that the USA really has lost all interest in the rule of law, it is getting in the way, and any excuse to avoid it is taken out of expediency.
Exactly! I would add to that the “plausible” explanation that bringing Osama bin Laden to trail would have been politically very costly to Obama thanks to Obama. A majority of Americans, both liberal and conservative have been trained over the last decade plus to believe in violence as “adult” and rule of law or self restraint as effete in times of war and they have been additionally trained to see the war on terror, the viagra of blood-lust, as a perpetual war. Amazingly, in large part thanks to Obama, this now includes a wide swath of so called “liberals” or “progressives”. Recent surveys have shown that more than 50% of Americans now believe in the use of torture. That was unthinkable twenty years ago. The only people who would have been openly “for” torture back then would have been at the level of the KKK or some similar whaco group.
Obama has made it abundantly clear he wouldn’t waste any more emotion or thought on the rule of law in this empire building than Rham Emanuel or Dick Cheney or Carl Rove, but even if he did, it would be a major up-hill battle for which he would have only himself to thank given the legitimacy he has bestowed on violence as a Democratic ideal.
A typo; I said “Generals do treat the lives of soldiers as precious beyond price.”
I meant the opposite, “Generals do not treat the lives of soldiers as precious beyond price.”
i.e, lives are risked and sacrificed to achieve relatively minor military objectives all the time, and Seal Team Six would have taken the assignment to capture him alive without question, and would have continued to carry that out even in the case of fatalities among them. It is their job, they are trained by exercises to adapt and keep going despite fatalities, and to put the success of the mission before their own lives.
Dredd,
The book “Kent State How and Why” gives an excellent review of the facts known at that time. I would not be surprised if the FBI was inciting things.
Karl,
if OBL was not the the most wanted fugitive on the planet, please let us know who was. Where do you get Obama reelection out of this article? Many of the posters that I read here do not seem to be pro-Obama. I for one will support him as the best choice available, but even I have written critical comments about him. What article are you reading?
BB,
Thanks for the links. Not exactly a quote but a pretty good fit. The NPR ombudsman should take a course in logic and another in journalism. What a load of BS.
@OS: Having been grunt military myself, I find the idea that a Seal Team commander would be court martialed if a member of his team was killed taking Bin Laden captive absolutely ludicrous. It is simply false.
I say the same about the naive concept that we must not risk any lives to achieve a military objective like capturing Bin Laden alive; lives are risked and lost to acquire intelligence, to blow up bridges or attack transports, for all sorts of relatively minor strategic objectives. Generals do treat the lives of soldiers as precious beyond price.
Finally, the idea of Bin Laden as some sort of super soldier is misguided. Was George W. Bush a super-soldier? He had military training too, he could fire a gun, at some point he could pilot a plane. It would not be an impossible stretch to believe that at some point in his youth he was willing to fight for his country. But not as President, if the White House had been invaded I feel certain he would have thrown up his hands and surrendered.
I do not believe this is a false equivalence at all, Bin Laden was at the TOP of the food chain in AQ, and I would not blithely assume he was willing to give his OWN life for the cause, I presume that like Bush he was willing to order soldiers to give THEIR lives for his cause.
Trying to make a case that it was strategically impossible to capture Bin Laden alive is over the top. For Seal Team members in particular, every mission they accept is potentially lethal, and they will accept orders that are essentially “Accomplish the objective or die trying.”
As a soldier, especially an elite soldier assigned to the most sensitive missions, one must fully embrace the concept that some missions are more important than one’s life, or the life of your team. If you cannot do that, you cannot be on the team. (As an aside it is true, and I felt it was true for myself in the military.)
Obama and the military CHOSE to kill Bin Laden outright rather than try him, and I’d bet a month’s salary the real reason was not fear of loss of soldiers.
The plausible reasons, to me, are for the uncomplicated sound-bite publicity factor (Obama the Warrior is much easier than Obama the Arresting Officer), and for the value to their own fear-inducing campaign, which includes Awlaki and others and the creation of the world wide American Empire. It is the summary execution without trial of the ancient Romans, oppose us and die, speak against us and die.
The goal is to effectively rule the world, and history from the ancient Romans on shows us this is what really works; a combination of brutal suppression of threats and liberal freedom for the flocks if they keep in line.
That is what is working now in the USA. Stay in your homes and blather to your heart’s content, or watch TV, or learn to knit. Try and actually protest the government or its clients and expect to be tased, sprayed, clubbed and dragged by your government; and perhaps you will be charged and tried, but the cops that violated your civil rights will not be. Or you might even be killed outright as a “terrorist by decree.”
The reason Bin Laden was killed instead of captured is that the USA really has lost all interest in the rule of law, it is getting in the way, and any excuse to avoid it is taken out of expediency.
Bettykath: The context was the Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, of NPR talking about why NPR used the term enhansed Interrogation techniques instead of simply “torture”. You can follow the gist of it by this link:
http://www.salon.com/2009/06/22/npr/
In one interview,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/harsh_interrogation_techniques.html
Shepard specifically stated Both Presidents Bush and Obama have insisted that the United States does not use torture. as if the statements alone, coming from a President, where sufficient evidence to use the term “enhanced interrogation” rather than torture. I’ll never forget that because it indeed is the kind of subservience one gives only to a King who is not fettered even by the Magna Carta.
Naturally, all of this is related to Tricky Dick, who claimed that if the President did something, then it was not illegal.