US Commits Murder--So Say The Usual Suspects

Late yesterday afternoon the White House issued a revision of the "Osama Meets The SEALs" narrative.  Almost instantly the usual suspects sprang into action with denunciations of the US as a criminal enterprise.  The High Minded and Lofty Thinking protectors of human rights ranging from the ever present UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, all the way to German ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt and assorted human rights lawyers and activists have alleged that the US commandos engaged in flat out assassination in violation of international law.

One man, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights and fundamental freedoms, Martin Scheinin, a Finnish lawyer who has leveled criticisms against the US and its war on terror in the past, swam against the prevailing current.  In Sheinin's view the US did not violate international law but rather strengthened it by having used a means which provided bin Laden with the possibility of surrendering.  Scheinin takes the rational position that had bin Laden "raised the white flag" he would have avoided being killed on the spot.

Scheinin is right and the others, the legions of those High Minded and Lofty Thinking folks whose hearts have been blighted by the idea that Osama bin Laden is dead, are wrong.  The SEALs are tightly disciplined and very highly trained professional warriors who would have accepted any affirmative sign of surrender on the part of bin Laden.  The mere fact that he gave no such signal--which need be no more complex than raising the hands--in the context of armed resistance by others is sufficient.  Absent a clear and unambiguous sign of submission (something at which any Muslim should be well accomplished),  the man or men present were well within the limits of legal requirement and mission briefing alike to push the delete key on the terrorist leader.

In one of the cited articles, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch demanded that "law enforcement" procedures should apply in situations such as that in the bin Laden compound.  It is unclear just what might be meant by the words chosen, but it is doubtful that any law enforcement personnel facing an identical situation with a known criminal gang engaged in armed resistance would have acted other than did the SEALs.  The HRW executive missed the point--in a context of armed resistance, when facing a man with known propensities for resistance, an individual is compelled to use deadly force unless there is a clear, unmistakable sign of surrender.

While it may bother those whose lives are so orderly and well protected that they have never had to make the sort of decisions made by either special forces troops or law enforcement personnel, the reality is as Mr Scheinin inferred in his assessment: The onus is on the person facing arrest to surrender.  In short, Osama bin Laden chose to die rather than submit, a course of action in keeping with his life philosophy and religious ideology.

Helmut Schmidt among others drew a series of incorrect analogies from history.  For example, opponents of the American action have invoked both the Nuremberg trials and that of Slobodan Milosevic as the paradigms for the handling of Osama bin Laden.  Neither is apposite.  The senior Nazi officials as well as the one-time Serbian jefe grande surrendered without a struggle.  There you have it.  Had Osama bin Laden simply held up his hands as the aforementioned war criminals did, he would be alive and well right now in US custody.

Other critics such as Geoffrey Robertson, a well known Australian human rights lawyer, alleged that justice was not done in the case of Osama bin Laden.  Mr Robertson is of the view that justice can only be done by the process of arrest, trial, conviction, and punishment.  He is wrong.  Justice came as a swift and shocking event to Osama in a way quite similar to the manner in which death came for some three thousand people on 9/11.  Actual justice would have required that Osama bin Laden experience the same horrid dread of the inevitable that afflicted the last moments of those on the doomed airliners.

One can only hope that he did.