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darthdavid wrote:We should have arrested him, given him a fair trial and thrown him in jail or executed him or whatever. This was an assassination and I don't like that to be the sort of thing my country does...

There probably was no practical way to arrest them. For all we currently know, arrest might have been an option for the special forces if possibly without risk to american personnel - and, well, it might just be that that was not the case.
Even if it was a straight assassination, this is one of the cases where i see nothing wrong with it. Osama clearly WAS an enemy combatant. Put them on trial if you can catch them, but you are not obliged to catch them - not any more than you are obliged to do so with an enemy soldier in a time of war.

So if you want to know how this is different than Gitmo:
-his status as an enemy combatant was clear. Not the case with everyone in Gitmo.
-he was not in custody. It's like with an enemy soldier: You can shoot him on sight, you are only bound by Geneva etc. when you have him as a prisoner of war.

Hence, i can see nothing wrong with assassinating Osama.

Lagmonster wrote:If killing Osama has been the goalpost, and I kept hearing for ten years that it was, it might be a good time to pause the game and look at the score. You know, figure out how much all sides lost, or what we gained, to get to this point. Put a final political and human price point on this man's death.

As has been pointed out, this was a goal that was set for one reason: Retribution for 9/11. Vengeance, revenge, justice call it what you want.

Do you question the cost of getting Hitler? Or defeating Japan? (I use these examples because they both declared actual war on our country and attacked us.)

This is a war no matter how you want to look at it. There are targets that are harder to find and hit, but there are targets. This is what happens when a group declares war on another.

There's no way in hell they're going to turn Osama into a media spectacle while he languishes in jail. I'm sure the second he heard the sound of gunfire, Osama knew how it was going to end. In pain and suffering.

Ironically, Bin Laden would probably be one of the best treated prisoners in our country's history, if we had gotten him back here.

Apparently (according to reports) the special forces did give him a chance to surrender and be taken into custody. If so, then bin Laden choose death over captivity.

As for assassination - define the term. It's no secret that the USA has wanted bin laden "dead or alive" for 10 years now. This wasn't for political ideology but because he had orchestrated an attack on US soil that resulted in nearly 3,000 dead and a great deal of damage besides. Chasing down a murderer who is then killed in a firefight with the police is not an assassination, which is how I view this more or less (granted, it was military special forces and not the police, but the analogy is there). This wasn't some innocent civilian with a viewpoint the US disagrees with, this was a man who had spent a great deal of his life planning and plotting and actually killing people. It wasn't just 9/11, either - bin Laden has been linked to a lot of other deaths in other countries, either through lending personnel or giving money or otherwise providing aid and assistance. A sampling:

- 1992 Movenpick and Goldmohur Hotel in Aden, Yemmen, 2 dead, others wounded
- 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 6 dead, 1042 injured
- 1996 Khobar Towers, 20 dead, 372 wounded.
- Also in 1996, attempted assassination of US President Bill Clinton in Manilla (detected and averted by changing the route of the President's motorcade)
- Believed to have provided funding for the 1997 Luxor Massacre in Egypt. 62 dead
- 1998 Embassy bombing in Tanzania and Kenya, 200 dead
- 2000, bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen, 17 dead
- September 11, 2001, NYC, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania, 2,974 dead

On top of all that, he had openly declared war against the United States. As soon as he did that, he's fair game for the military.

He was not a nice guy. Even so, no one shot him in the back, or poisoned his dinner. Being given a chance to surrender was far more than any of his victims got. No, this wasn't an assassination. A thug getting shot by people who give you a chance to lay down arms and surrender isn't an assassination, or an execution. It's more like he lost the war he started.

wait did shroomy just quote Max Paine? and why would osama be well treated?

There are some news articles floating around saying he'll be buried at sea. Don't know if that is true.

Enigma wrote:There are some news articles floating around saying he'll be buried at sea. Don't know if that is true.

There are a couple of sources I've seen that say it's been done already, but that can't be right can it?

Why not? From what I'm seeing it's been done already and taken care of. They did it according to muslim burial customs, which says the body must be buried within 24 hours.

Something that makes me uncomfortable about this whole thing is that we're overtly celebrating someone's death. Bin Laden was an asshole who got what was coming to him, but dancing in the streets of cities? Having parties and waving American flags? It's not the least bit unsettling to people that we're almost as blood thirsty as he was? Hav was right, it was a vengeance killing. We can wrap it in the packaging of "justice" but that doesn't change the innate motivation behind it.

But hey i'm sure the next time a foreign country is celebrating the death of some American we'll all look at them and say "lol crazy moslums".

Not to turn this historic thread into special forces dick waving but does anyone know why SEALs were used for this mission ? Would not Delta be more suited for what is arguably the most important special forces operation in living memory ? Especially considering that Bin Laden was nowhere the sea which as I understand is the SEALs environment of greatest expertise...

Korgeta wrote:I fail to see why anyone who commits mass murder should be buried according to their tradition, he went against what other muslims want islam to be, a religon of peace and that he triggered off the occupation for afghanistan later as an excuse to invade iraq as well...

Because when we start making a point of spiting designated extra-bad people after their death, it tends to backfire? Doing things like, say, digging up Oliver Cromwell's body and beheading it... that didn't detract from the Cromwell legend.

You can't really punish an enemy that way- it says more about you than it does about them, that you're reduced to taking your revenge on a dead body.

FSTargetDrone wrote:Looks like CNN is reporting that the body has already been buried at sea.

Well, I hope they got a [good] picture or something, because otherwise we are so open to some guy who looks suspiciously like Osama bin Laden showing up on TV in a year or two and saying "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Dark Hellion wrote:I wonder if Obama's recent decisions on things such as Gitmo, civilian trials, and wikileaks has ties to the prep work for this operation. Obama may have made a deal with the devil in order to protect some pieces of intelligence necessary.

It would be nice to think so. I'll believe it when I see it.

darthdavid wrote:We should have arrested him, given him a fair trial and thrown him in jail or executed him or whatever. This was an assassination and I don't like that to be the sort of thing my country does...

It's a bit difficult to arrest a man who does not want to be arrested and has a machine gun. It's also a bit difficult to carry live prisoners onto a helicopter to escape from a country whose intelligence service is strongly suspected of being on the prisoner's side.

Havok wrote:As has been pointed out, this was a goal that was set for one reason: Retribution for 9/11. Vengeance, revenge, justice call it what you want.

Do you question the cost of getting Hitler? Or defeating Japan? (I use these examples because they both declared actual war on our country and attacked us.)

In both cases, yes- but you can sit down, do the arithmetic, and go "sooo worth it." In the War on Terror, I'm not so sure we can do that, especially if the war keeps going on indefinitely and bin Laden's death doesn't really change anything.

Hawkwings wrote:Why not? From what I'm seeing it's been done already and taken care of. They did it according to muslim burial customs, which says the body must be buried within 24 hours.

Cool, thanks.
I'm not really very knowledgeable about... well, very much to be honest, but the Muslim burial custom one is one I really don't know.

CaptHawkeye wrote:Something that makes me uncomfortable about this whole thing is that we're overtly celebrating someone's death. Bin Laden was an asshole who got what was coming to him, but dancing in the streets of cities? Having parties and waving American flags? It's not the least bit unsettling to people that we're almost as blood thirsty as he was? Hav was right, it was a vengeance killing. We can wrap it in the packaging of "justice" but that doesn't change the innate motivation behind it.

But hey i'm sure the next time a foreign country is celebrating the death of some American we'll all look at them and say "lol crazy moslums".

Others feel about the same way.

As for my own opinion, why wouldn't people cheer about this? After all, en enemy of them is dead. Saying cheering it is bad would assume that the USA is some special place populated by better people than the ones living in other countries and while I am sure some americans believe that tale, it really doesn't hold up. The US populace is no more advanced than other societies, so why should they be expected to behave better?

I bet that you'd get the same celebration in about any other country as well.

CaptHawkeye wrote:Something that makes me uncomfortable about this whole thing is that we're overtly celebrating someone's death.

To quote Bill Maher (on Falwell) - "Death isn't always sad".

Thanas wrote:As for my own opinion, why wouldn't people cheer about this? After all, en enemy of them is dead. Saying cheering it is bad would assume that the USA is some special place populated by better people than the ones living in other countries and while I am sure some americans believe that tale, it really doesn't hold up. The US populace is no more advanced than other societies, so why should they be expected to behave better?

I bet that you'd get the same celebration in about any other country as well.

I don't think it means we can't hope for better even if we can't expect better. I generally feel roughly similar about the whole cheering thing to Hawkeye. I don't think I've ever seen anything inject itself into ingame chat like that, for example (I was playing World of Tanks and for four games straight people were celebrating.) I don't seem to remember the Japanese earthquake/tsunami generating much of any reaction in any game, for example. Not even a have you heard type thing. Mass celebration over something like killing somebody even one like that when you wouldn't let other stuff bleed into everything like that feels a little off to me.

Lagmonster wrote:If killing Osama has been the goalpost, and I kept hearing for ten years that it was, it might be a good time to pause the game and look at the score. You know, figure out how much all sides lost, or what we gained, to get to this point. Put a final political and human price point on this man's death.

Well, the human price is probably the 2.3 million or so people that have been killed as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the billions upon billions the US spent to get there. So it's not looking too good for the US. I mean, unless we divorce the wars entirely from Osama's death, then we can celebrate because we only spent a few million dollars and killed only a few people!!

Thanas wrote:

CaptHawkeye wrote:Something that makes me uncomfortable about this whole thing is that we're overtly celebrating someone's death. Bin Laden was an asshole who got what was coming to him, but dancing in the streets of cities? Having parties and waving American flags? It's not the least bit unsettling to people that we're almost as blood thirsty as he was? Hav was right, it was a vengeance killing. We can wrap it in the packaging of "justice" but that doesn't change the innate motivation behind it.

But hey i'm sure the next time a foreign country is celebrating the death of some American we'll all look at them and say "lol crazy moslums".

Others feel about the same way.

As for my own opinion, why wouldn't people cheer about this? After all, en enemy of them is dead. Saying cheering it is bad would assume that the USA is some special place populated by better people than the ones living in other countries and while I am sure some americans believe that tale, it really doesn't hold up. The US populace is no more advanced than other societies, so why should they be expected to behave better?

I bet that you'd get the same celebration in about any other country as well.

I can understand the celebration, but on the other hand, I just wish people'd look at the overall cost and reflect a little on whether it's really been worth it.

I think its a good call on the burial-at-sea, of course there's always going to be someone who claims that its a hoax and his body was never found. I'm just glad he's dead.

^They took pictures. If necessary, these can always be released.

And I get that people wish the American Public would have behaved "more noble" and a bit more "introspective", but just look at European societies. Britain celebrated their victory as well. I really do not think one can flaunt the Americans in this instant, nor that one could flaunt others in the past who celebrated what they viewed as the downfall of their enemies.

Thanas wrote:And I get that people wish the American Public would have behaved "more noble" and a bit more "introspective", but just look at European societies. Britain celebrated their victory as well. I really do not think one can flaunt the Americans in this instant, nor that one could flaunt others in the past who celebrated what they viewed as the downfall of their enemies.

Noble is one thing, but heck I'm surprised they didn't cancel school today and make it a national day of celebration.

Now that would be taking it a bit far.

You never know. I called my friend, who was still at church. He shouted out the news and the congregation started cheering.

No, I mean declaring a national day of celebration and all.

Bin Laden just isn't that big an enemy, when you get right down to it; the scale of his crimes is kind of petty compared to the really serious villains of the 20th century. A national day of celebration would be not only a bit on the ghoulish side, but also... disproportionate.

This isn't V-E day we're talking about here.

One thing will always be constant. And that is the crazy.

One of my friends just told me that Osama Bin Laden was reported dead two years ago by Pakistani news agencies. I decided to play along for fun and asked him for independent corroboration. He linked me to an NBC interview where the Pakistani president said he believed Bin Laden was dead due to sheer lack of contact.

The crazy can be fun sometimes.