Bin Laden Dead

[Lonewolf_50]

You don't get to claim the moral high ground

Which is important to whom? Who do you think occupies this mythical terrain: Salafists? You? Ivory Tower dwellers?

IF he was unarmed and did not resist

Why do you assume this?

, or IF this was a kill (as opposed to capture) mission,

PTT, you really don't seem to understand. It is most often both, and either, in the same mission orders.

Mission orders for a whole slew of terrorist and non-national actors in the past ten years have been very clear: Kill or Capture.

There was a freakin' laundry list of targets under that classification when I was last in operational modes, a few years back.

YOUR nation signed up for this approach, my friend, in the infamous coalition of the billing.
Kill or capture orders, for example, were issued for Al Zaqauari.
(He of the infamous bridge in Fallujah stunt). Looks like "kill" was the option chosen, via F-16 or some such high speed armed jet.

then the US has lost the moral war.

What, pray tell, is that little fiction your are spouting? Has a moral war anything to do with killing your enemies, or are you referring to the war of cultural symbols and propaganda?

If you're so sure this was the right thing to do then what is there to fear from a trial?

I will ask you a simpler question: what is the point of a trial?

He has already admitted and bragged about his happiness in 9-11 exceeding his expectations. If you wish to give him a further political soap box from which to foam at the mouth. He chose to wage war, of an unconventional sort, going back to about 1996 with such followers as he could manage. So, he got what he wanted, a war, and got to be killed, in that war. I don't see where your insistence on a trial makes any sense, as an imperative, rather than as an option.

How about you go capture him and put him on trial?

Oh, what was that? You are unable. Funny old thing, yes? Yet there you sit on the sideline, sniping and whinging, since you Can't do.

Impotence, thy stench is mighty ...

[PTT]

- We try to occupy it. The invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan and our intervention in Libya are justified on our occupation of the moral high ground.

- I don't assume it. Hence the "IF".

- I fully understand it, thanks. I am well aware of how the orders go. What I am talking about is our leaders' justification for giving the orders. The troops do what they are told to the best of their ability. Please don't shift this so it looks like I am in any way not backing the troops at all - it's about the politics.
I don't recall our nation signing up for this approach at all, actually.

- The moral war is the one which allows us (the military) to continue to act as a "force for good" and "in the name of the people". Every time our politicians order us to do something of this sort it sullies our reputation as a military and as a nation and degrades our ability to act as that same "force for good". Reputation goes a long way.

- The point of a trial is to say to the world that despite the heinous crimes OBL committed, we are still going to subject him to the rule of law. By deliberately not doing so (i.e. deciding not to capture him rather than taking the kill option because there was no other) we are saying to the world that the rule of law doesn't matter a jot and the rule of the gun does. Nice one

- I have no idea what you think it is I "can't" do. You have about me at all, so I really don't get the point of that little snipe other than it being another example of the ad hominems which simply show you don't have a point.
Impotence, thy stench is mighty indeed