With the assassination of an unarmed Osama bin Laden and questions arising whether he should have been abducted and brought to the United States to stand trial, the distinctions between justice and revenge once more confuse and confound the law abiding.
Fifty years ago Israel's spy network kidnapped Hitler's most trusted henchman, Adolf Eichmann, from a suburb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he had been hiding for 10 years. The Israelis drugged and disguised him as an El Al flight attendant, and spirited him to a Jerusalem courtroom where he would become known as the infamous man in the bulletproof glass booth.
Argentina angrily decried that Israel had violated its sovereignty even though it had been harboring a mass murderer, in plain view, living under an alias. (Pakistan is registering similar, even more laughable complaints about the killing of bin Laden.) The world watched the trial for 14 weeks, which represented a legal and moral indictment of Eichmann's crimes as the architect of the Final Solution.
But what if those Israeli agents had simply shot Eichmann in the head while he was walking home from work, and then dumped his body into a ditch? Would this have been less just; would it have been illegal?
There are those who now wonder why if bin Laden was unarmed -- and his Pakistani fortress was fortified merely with a few couriers, one of his own sons and his youngest wife -- didn't the 80 American commandos simply kidnap him, Eichmann-style, and bring him back to the United States alive rather than toss his body into the ocean?
President George W. Bush promised that in retaliating against those responsible for 9/11, the United States would be seeking justice and not revenge. But what did he think justice should look like, and how would it have differed from vengeance? Hunting down and killing bin Laden, under President Obama's watch, appears to have been an act of revenge that can't entirely be reconciled with the treatment of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of 9/11, who awaits a military commission in Guantánamo Bay. Yet most people would agree that bin Laden received his just desserts even in the absence of a trial.
Not too long ago Saddam Hussein was yanked from a hole and forced to appear in court where he was tried and executed. Just last week Muammar Gaddafi was nearly killed when a NATO bomb dropped on his hideaway. Both Hussein and Gaddafi were unsavory dictators, despots and menaces to the world order. Yet one was subject to a trial before his people and the world, while the other is likely to be blown up or assassinated before the end of this month.
Did Eichmann and Hussein receive true justice by appearing in courts of law and sentenced to death under the rule of law? Was Osama bin Laden notably and unceremoniously treated to a revenge killing for his crimes on 9/11 (and Gaddafi for his act of terrorism against Pan Am Flight 103 from Lockerbie), by meeting a violent and summary end without ever receiving his day in court? Four murderous men with an incalculable and un-washable amount of blood on their hands, and yet two received conventional justice, while bin Laden (and perhaps Gaddafi), met his fate from a swifter and more wrathful style of biblical vengeance. In the end, however, all are (or will be) dead.
But are these methods of final punishment really so different? In the moral universe, justice and vengeance are mirror images of one another. There can be no justice unless victims feel avenged, and revenge is never just unless it is proportionate. In cases of mass murder, retaliating "measure for measure," an "eye for an eye," "tit for tat," is admittedly more difficult, but retaliation is still mandated, even when the math is imprecise, regardless of what form it takes.
Osama bin Laden produced a great debt on 9/11, and he was deserving of a substantial payback to settle the score. Whether it came from a bullet to his head or a trial that would have ended in a guilty verdict and a death sentence, punishment was due. And for reasons both legal and moral, his many victims had to be given the satisfaction that justice was done.
The surviving families of 9/11 are surely untroubled that bin Laden was assassinated without the courtesy of judicial review. The heinousness of his crimes and the magnitude of their loss makes his summary execution just. And the vengeful feeling that his death evokes does not in any way diminish the justice he received.
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If the government respected us, then they would have shown us the body of Osama Bib Laden.
Governments have respected the people throughout history by displaying the body.
We even saw the dead body of Sadam Hussein, who was not even involved in the World Trade Center terrorist attack.
We may have reached a time in our civilizations history where the people have no power at all.
Our voice has been silenced. Our clout evaporated. We are nothing to them – the government.
They no longer fear us. Or respect us.
Maybe the value of the people, in the government eyes, is in now only in their capacity to be consumers.
We have been reduced to consumers. Nothing more.
I am amazed at your logic. Rather than making a distinct "unterschied" between Revenge and Justice, you are equating just the punishment.
As a twenty one year old student in West Berlin, I saw Adolf Eichman's trial on television. I still remember the question posed by the Israel's Mossad operatives to Eichman after he was captured if he wanted to be shot dead then or he wanted a trial in Israel. I was proud of the choice the state of Israel gave to even the most wanted criminal.Obviously he wanted a trial.
The Rule of Law is the foundation on which a civilized society is formed and endures. Not the Rule of the sword.
Why was the trial so essential? There were hundreds of witnesses who had to tell their stories and get hate out of their system. After the Judgement was pronounced there was no jubilation in the streets or ball parks. Just a sense of satisfaction that Eichman got what he deserved.
I wished and hoped the Osama was brought to New York city, tried and for days the Muslim community had a chance to hear what a monster he was and answer their children's question at home as to why this man who preyed five times a day, was so evil. I firmly believe that these children would have become the best goodwill ambassadors.
Now it is the United States Government's word against some Muslim countries and Let the Game of Revenge begin.
Remember what a pedantic mumble head SH was during his trial? Sadly on the day of Saddam's execution, the victims jeering at the shivering SH, as he was about to be hanged, afforded a last chance for SH to remake his image as a courageous leader. If the victims had just been in a separate room, he would have died grumbling like he did during the trial. Instead he died with an enviable dignity. CLEARLY I understand the jeering by victims but they allowed him to die on his terms...that is still a great leader, the rightful President of Iraq, merely humbled by a Shia mob.
As for BL: Why are not Americans concerned that 80 Navy Seals could not drag BL alive back to America? Was BL a KungFu Ninja warrior with super powers? He was but a dreary old man and we've missed a chance to kill the myth. America has slaughtered innocent people.. over a hundred thousand dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Even with this slaughter it seems my country is not satisfied. We must have yet more dead? Let's kill Americans without trial: booya!
As Nuremberg showed: Evil is done by men not demons and a trial brings justice not myths.
Not in my universe. Justice implies compensation for loss. There can be no compensation for the loss of a loved one. Revenge is a natural, knee-jerk reaction. But, rather than compensate us for our loss, revenge only costs us more in the long run. Revenge is an indulgence that tastes bitter and makes it more difficult to find peace and dignity in the wake of our loss.
This in no way diminishes the need to take action and stop horrible people from doing evil. It may, at times, be justifiable to kill - in order to protect ourselves. But only when there are no alternatives. And we should never be seduced into using revenge to fill the void left by our loss.
In my universe it can never be equitable to replace the love I felt for someone - with the hatred of another. From a justice/compensation perspective, it's just a terrible deal.
First, what proof does anyone have bin Laden was not armed? I've seen numerous speculations alluding to such a possible scenario, yet zero evidence even remotely construed as factual.
Second, lacking the evidence purported above, we are conversing on an action in which the integrity of the United States Navy SeALs -- the most professional group of men in existence -- is being questioned by the mainstream media. You know, the (latter) hype-and-hoopla aficionados proven, time after time, to report with bias, slant and completely unfounded truths. 'Tis a track record of honor and honesty versus a proven record of deceit and retractions. Hmm.
Finally, while the "assassination" sensationalist statement sounds superb (mostly to non-thinkers everywhere intent on assigning blame to America regardless of situation, proof or even circumstantial validity of claim), it is a misnomer and should have been excluded. Or is it your contention that every sniper in every military is an assassin? After all, we don't holler out demands to surrender from 700 meters when our mission is one of other-than submission.
Everyone here, the author included, knows one thing for sure: we don't know the entire story for sure. Postulating is fun, but I believe the benefit of the doubt goes to the professionals who train to do the right thing when no one is looking: The USN SeALs.
I am of a mind, Alexis, as a former professional soldier (8 years Army Infantry - a FAR cry from the SeALs and their professionalism and training) that the generic "we" -- the military as a generalized group -- are often misrepresented in the media due to the political maneuvering of a few influential individuals and their constituents. That is, sensationalism sells: ergo, you'll never see media footage of all the good my unit did in our theaters of operations, but you're accosted with 5th Stryker Brigade semantics, drug use, and outright criminal, immoral and barbaric behavior.
You're trying to create a quagmire of ambiguities that I do not see as stringing together. If that is my ignorance or foolishness, then I welcome reproach as correction and will accept anything in consideration invalidating my original statement.
At this time, I remain confident that Seal Team Six described accurately the events in the AAR (After Action Report). I just don't have reason to doubt them.
It is fascinating that the verse does not command us to blot out Amalek, but rather the memory of it. I maintain that the best way to do this would be to convert Amalek – at least to acceptance of the Seven Noahide Laws of Morality. The Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 99) suggests that Timna, the mistress of Eliphaz, son of Esau, wished to convert to Judaism, but was rejected by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Disappointed, she went to live with Eliphaz, and the child they bore together was Amalek (Genesis 36:12) .The talmudic lesson derived from this is that she should have been accepted. There is even a talmudic tradition that the descendants of Amalek taught Torah in Bnei Brak! If conversion is impossible, however, then evil must be destroyed. And one has a right to rejoice when an evil individual – ready to act against innocent people – is prevented from doing so, as in the case of bin Laden.
Yes.
One of these methods is nothing more than an act of extra-judicial murder.