On OBL, USA and Murder

[Lisnpuppy]

I am not really sure how the "war on drugs" is a good analogy for this one...Mr/Ms DeTomaso. The reason being the war on drugs is on...well drugs, drug trafficking, production, etc..not a country, not a para-military organization, not a dictator, that has admitted to killing people en masse.

 

Also this "illegal war" of which you speak...and I am not sure as to which you refer. However Osama bin Laden was a SELF-ADMITTED TERRORIST who admitted to being the mastermind (if you will) behind 9/11 and announced at any chance he got that he would attack Americans and America again. Now I am not 100% up on the Geneva Convention but I say that puts him in a category all to himself and as such he would NOT be protected by the same laws or rules of war as folk have been in the past. He was an enemy terrorist combatant, who was a self-proclaimed killer of thousands of people. He did not play by the rules therefor the rules do not protect him.

[DeTomaso]

So close to Mexico you have still not the slightest idea how militarized the drug cartels of today are, Mr or Mrs Lisnpuppy? Not to mention the fact that legal wars are exclusively wars between states and they always pressupose an official declaration of war. Already civil wars open the abyss when it comes to the Geneva Convention.

 

A war against a new international "category of its own" ultimately calls for an international juridical investigation first, and not for a creating of facts in Billy the Kid fashion. Who do you think the US is? Lifted up from international law? Don't even think of it. It's just a part of an international community that all-too often looks away for the time being when one of its permanent members of the Security Council is cooking his own soup.

I repeat: Nobody stands above the law! Neither you nor me nor somebody else. Do we have a consensus on the matter?

Having said that, we have a new international threat against Col. Gaddafi by the ICC. And that is indeed the legal way it goes. Once we give up our sense of justice, playing comics in reality, we will end up in anarchy, no doubt about it. Others may quickly learn from US tactics to get rid of their own opponents. You may thus go where you want, I don't follow. Too old I am for adventures of the third kind with own goal guarantee that are directed against all lessons learned. My prayers are with you, nonetheless.

Edited May 18, 2011 by DeTomaso

[Lisnpuppy]

Osama was a clear and present danger to this country (who should have been found years ago) who repeatedly said that he would again target America and her citizens. Though I am more than happy to have this debate...as when there is no longer debate is when I worry about things the most....I don't have to agree with it. Osama had shown on multiple occasions what he was capable of (embassy bombings, the USS Cole, 9/11) and that alone more than any other thing is what made him get that bullet in the head. Would it have been nice to wrap all that up in a nice present to sit at the door of the Court of Public Opinion of the International Community...or the International Courts? Of course so...and I am glad that it is being done in Libya. However Gaddafi is not a threat now...so easily done.

 

I would not, as president...as liberal as I sometimes am....waited one second to make the same decision that President Obama did. Presented to the Internation Community would have been a disaster and LEGITIMIZED the terrorism and the terrorist groups and given them yet a further platform on which to spread their poison. How many people would have died while the arguments ensued? How many more years would it have taken for them to have come to a decision and by then..where would he have been?

 

Was this operation the "best of things in the best of all possible worlds?" Not just no..but hell no. I will however, take it and everything that comes with it any day over the alternatives.

 

We have a saying around here..not one I usually refer as I pride myself on being a reasoning person...but sometimes it does work. "He done needed killin" is what they say..and he did. To keep him from doing the very things he had done in the past and would have done again. To have taken this through what you deem as "proper channels" would only have legitimized Osama and his terrorist organizations and given more time for him and them to kill innocent people.

[Lisnpuppy]

double post by Nexus....sorry! :facepalm:

[DeTomaso]

I understand you. We just have a fundamentally different understanding of righteous justice and the equality of man in front of the law, that's all. Lynch law vs Nurnberg trial. Like the fathers and grandfathers of the today American youth I prefer the latter by good reasons - it ends the story, lynch law never did.

[ginnyfizz]

Yep. It appears that DeTomaso believes we should have taken the risk, which would have been a very real one, of putting him before the International Courts/Community and him being acquitted. Not at all unlikely given the "Let's all hate on America" attitude prevalent in so many parts of the world. From the type of people who cry outrage at the killing of Osama yet consider this mass murderers crimes to be justified.

 

Your arguments do not hold water, DeTomaso,as a lawyer I can assure you that the legitimacy of taking out enemy combatants even when unarmed is well established. Talking about an illegal war (much as the legalities of the Iraq war are dubious) is a red herring! Osama getting a bullet in the head was all about Osama declaring war/jihad on the West with his terrorist attacks. No matter what he was using as justification.

 

"He had it coming, he had it coming, he only had himself to blame..."

[Lisnpuppy]

I understand you. We just have a fundamentally different understanding of righteous justice and the equality of man in front of the law, that's all. Lynch law vs Nurnberg trial. Like the fathers and grandfathers of the today American youth I prefer the latter by good reasons - it ends the story, lynch law never did.

 

Perhaps so but you misunderstand that my views on these one thing make ALL my views as such. Nurnberg trials were a great accomplishment...and yet how many Nazi went free or were saved by various countries including the U.S. for information and other reasons? Did that story really end? What of Mengele and others who slipped through the fingers of international justice.

 

At age 40 (it seems like you think I am 12) and with quickly growing children I look in this world and make my decisions based on only one thing anymore...will this give them a better world? I weigh the pros and cons of supporting such things...or condemning them. So it is for them and them alone that I am happy that it was that bullet and not a world trial.

[DeTomaso]

On Nurnberg one has to say that this trial has ended the terror regime of the German Nazis, not militarily but philosophically and juridically, and that was important. Consequently they didn't re-emerge like a phoenix from the ashes anymore. Their ideology was uncovered from that moment on and internationally doomed, the outcome of their deeds made known to all. A few escaped to South America, but only to be hunted down, predominantly by the Mossad, Those who were embedded by the US and the Soviets never played the Nazi again, instead they turned into good Americans and good Soviets. You remember Wernher von Braun, the father of the NASA Apollo program, right? Are these guys indeed to be blamed for their past? Hard to say, isn't it? I don't want to judge.

 

However that be, I’m not that much interested in endless loops dealing with basic issues, you know. My position on the matter is known now, as is yours. Fine, we are not cloned. Beyond that I’m rather interested in new insights on still running events in the Hindukush than on the justification of the irreversible past there. We can't change it anymore.

The question that bothers me most at the moment is the possible influence of bin Laden’s death on the upcoming spring offensive by the Taliban - the volunteers they might additionally recruit among the angry Pakistanis for that reason.

 

BTW, Your arguments, Mrs ginnyfizz, don't even swim in salt water. Only those that have something to hide prefer the death of the delinquent already before he begins to talk. So it was already in the case of Saddam Hussein and his two sons. The dead don't talk anymore and in this way they hardly bring others under suspicion. Actually we could draw no advantages, not even the smallest tactical one, from their overhasty death. Brave new world. In the Medieval Age the officals have made a lot of mistakes caused by faith, but for sure not a triple rookie mistake.

Edited May 19, 2011 by DeTomaso

[csgators]

On Nurnberg one has to say that this trial has ended the terror regime of the German Nazis, not militarily but philosophically and juridically, and that was important. Consequently they didn't re-emerge like a phoenix from the ashes anymore. Their ideology was uncovered from that moment on and internationally doomed, the outcome of their deeds made known to all.

 

You can't honestly believe that trying Osama would have had even close to the same result.

Edited May 19, 2011 by csgators

[RZ1029]

The difference is the Nazis were an idealism formed behind a man. Osama was a man who took on an (very) radical ideology that has been fed since the time of the Crusades many years ago (and it was already a tumultuous area at that time). The idea of the jihad against the 'West' isn't really new, it just shifted focus and took on the face of one man in particular.

 

My four and a half cent, for what it's worth.