"Yeah! Then you could show him his baby pictures and all those happy memories will make him good again!"I think it would certainly have been better if we captured him alive. As Verbose said, turning Bin Laden into a supporter would probably have harmed Al Qaeda (sp?) much more.
No Trial For Osama Bin Laden A Gift For All Americans
By Elie Mystal
I don't think anybody needed to hear testimony from this guy.
As you might have heard, United States special forces killed Osama Bin Laden. Let’s take a moment to be happy about that, but also to remember Bin Laden’s many, many victims.
Thank God he was killed, not “captured.” If he had been captured, there would have been some kind of trial. Some kind of fake, orchestrated, television show of a trial. Lawyers, judges, and others would have danced around trying to give Osama bin Laden the appearance of a fair hearing before his inevitable execution. It would have been a farce — a farce that our military and/or civilian courts are not equipped to handle.
Better for Bin Laden to meet his end as he did: via a double tap from a Navy Seal….
A trial of Osama bin Laden would have been gut wrenching. Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin lists some of the many complications that would have come from capturing Bin Laden:
Osama bin Laden was killed, not captured. If he had been taken into custody, what followed would have been the most complex and wrenching legal proceeding in American history. The difficulties would have been endless: military tribunal or criminal trial? Abroad—at Guantánamo?—or inside the United States? Would bin Laden have been granted access to the evidence against him? Who would represent him? What if he represented himself, and tried to use the trial as a propaganda platform? All those questions faded into irrelevance with bin Laden’s death on Sunday.
That’s just the half of it. An Osama bin Laden trial would not have been like Nuremberg. At Nuremberg the world was trying to process how many people could be held responsible for an attempted genocide, but the mastermind behind those atrocities was already dead. The correct analogy for Nuremberg would be the trials of the people being held at Guantanamo Bay, and look at how that is tearing us apart. We’ve spent so much time arguing over how these people should be treated, where they should be tried and by whom, that we’ve kind of lost sight of the very good and brave work it took to capture them in the first place.
At some level, that is the problem with an adversarial system of justice. The system doesn’t work unless somebody zealously stands opposed.
Osama bin Laden won’t be granted the dignity of somebody standing up and speaking up for his rights. No solider or civilian will have to concern themselves with how Bin Laden is treated or how he is cared for. Nobody will have to defend this guy. This wasn’t only about justice, it was also about vengeance. Vengeance we wanted and deserved. And vengeance can be ugly and violent. Better that mission was carried out in a freaking Pakistani suburb than in an American court of law. Better that mission was monitored by a predator drone than a cable news truck. We are all cleaner for it. As a commenter said this morning:
I’d like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than the bullet, was how the hell Barry Hussein ever got the best of him
Bang. Bang.
Now, there will be some who argue that it would have been better if the U.S. could have brought him back alive in an effort to “prove” to some in the Muslim world that the U.S. really did capture him. Or to silence conspiracy theorists who will undoubtedly claim that Osama is still alive and working on a new record with Elvis and TuPac.
Well, you know what? I don’t care. I don’t give one little nose hair about what some people would have wanted as “proof” that this evil man is no more. We didn’t go after him for their benefit. He wasn’t public enemy number one because he provided grist for the conspiracy mill. Osama bin Laden was a mass-murdering terrorist who killed thousands, here and elsewhere, and now he is dead. If you don’t want to believe that, fine, please enjoy a complimentary kiss of my ass on your way back to whatever paranoid rock you live under. The rest of us are reveling in this small measure of justice.
And because he died in the theater of operations, it’s a justice that we can all fully enjoy. Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, prosecution or defense. We don’t have to fight each other over how this man should be brought to justice; instead we can simply hug and cheer that justice has been meted out.
Thank you to the soldier who double-tapped Osama bin Laden. The American system of jurisprudence owes you one.
WRONG
Now I'm not one to religiously follow Above the Law but they are right here:
http://abovethelaw.com/2011/05/no-trial-for-osama-bin-laden-a-gift-for-all-americans/
Despite it's length, your article is not convincing. It mentions the decision to hold the trial in court, or a tribunal. It would obviously be a military tribunal, not civilian court. I say this because, unlike many of residents of gitmo, he actually IS an enemy combatant. Also, he declared war on America in '98. We may not have taken it seriously until a few years later, but it means it would be stupid to charge him for the WTC in a regular court, regardless of who he is. It's completely different. It is an attack in an open, declared war, that violates a law of war. That's tribunal country. Or we could send him to the Hague, but, y'know, this is 'merica!
This means that it doesn't have to be open to the public. You wanna know what's going on in there? Sorry, classified. Call me with a FOIA request in 25 years. Will that placate the people? It didn't with the tribunals at gitmo, so probably not. So, although it wouldn't simply hush any furor, there would be no circus of the sort the author describes.
It also works on the premise that Bin Laden would plead innocent and defend himself. Maybe he would, but i tend to believe that he would refuse to play along and await his martyrdom. No chance he'll defend himself for propaganda reasons, unless he thought the message would still be valid in a quarter century.
The only other real point in the article is it would offer proof to the world that he was, in fact, dead. I agree with him that this is no reason to bring him in alive in and of itself, but it's not a bad side effect. There is also the remote possibility we could get information from him. I tend to doubt he would talk, but we'll never know.
Yet another Osama thread I know . I'm thinking about the pros and cons of capturing him alive .I believe the US forces had the capability of capturing him alive if it was made a high priority
Pros :
1) Can torture/waterboard whatever to get valuable info about the remaining al-queda / taliban organization , hideouts (Normally I am against torture). What his previous hideouts were , people who gave him material aid from his escape of those afghan caves to his final hideout .
2) Less conspiracy theories about his death .
3) Trial under the law leading to his eventual death sentence .
Cons
1) More publicity/visibility for him throughout his trial
2) Might cause alqueda /sympathizers to take people hostage to demand his release even if it wont be accepted
3) Might make him more of a martyr in people's minds being sentenced to death by an US court than just dying to a hail of bullets .
I think the main pro of getting information from him , might or might not work . Has the potential to get wrong info as well. Torturing such a high profile detainee might also trigger a severe backlash .
And of course there is the possibility that he might make the whole trial into a circus giving publicity to his deranged views , thus inspiring even more people to follow his footsteps .
What do you think?
I think the right thing to do was to kill him.
The thing is, this is Osama Bin Laden, we KNOW he's guilty, even if we can't prove it. He's even admitted his guilt.
But all the civilian court terrorist trials so far have, despite the burden of due process, returned guilty verdicts.
When it comes right down to it, it's a matter of do you believe in the rule or law and American form of government or don't you? The only reason to oppose a trial for bin Laden is if you're scared of the truth. It might be embarrassing, but then again, justice usually is a little embarrassing to somebody. It's not about winning; it's about doing what's right.
But history is pretty clear in the War on Terror that the civilian system of legal justice works well and the world doesn't trust military tribunals. Conservatives' fears of truth and justice is not a good enough reason to throw out what works.
To paraphrase somebody on reddit, they should have captured him alive and made him go through TSA checkpoints at airports for the rest of his life, over and over and over
This comment is decidedly myopic and short of imaginable possibilities a show trial could result in. For one, it would create a platform for OBL to get the most out of his impending martyrdom, and inflame his followers to actions all over the world in protest. By simply killing him, we have taken away this ability and removed the bully pulpit he would have in a civilian trial.
To me, it seems far less about embarassment, and far more about have the foresight to see how expensive such a trial could be in American lives the world over. Its far, far better that he put quickly killed and dumped in the sea as he was.
I don't think he would make it alive to his electric chair.