Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Justice Stayed? Osama Bin Laden's Killing and Theories of International Justice

From Charli Carpenter, at Duck of Minerva, "Was "Justice' Served?"

Charli cites left-wing sources almost exclusively, and the others are largely academic links (and leftist by default). Interesting discussion, despite the high-falutin nature of the debate. Most regular folks couldn't care less if Osama Bin Laden got a trial. See Rasmussen, "86% Approve of Obama’s Decision to Kill bin Laden":
Americans overwhelmingly endorse President Obama’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden and don’t believe a greater effort should have been made to bring the terrorist mastermind to trial.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 86% of American Adults approve of the president’s decision authorizing the mission to kill bin Laden. Just five percent (5%) disapprove of the president’s action, while nine percent (9%) are undecided.

Only 14% say the special operations forces involved in the weekend mission should have tried harder to capture bin Laden so that he could have been given a fair trial. Seventy-five percent (75%) disagree and say there was no need for the Navy SEALs to try harder to capture the man behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States and several other major terrorist incidents. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.
This puts Charli Carpenter down there with less than one-sixth of the population, as she suggests that with America's actions, "justice ... has been stayed, not served." All is not lost, however. Charli's in good company with the folks from Human Rights Watch, "Human Rights Watch Condemns Bin Laden Killing: Odious Immoral Equivalence" (via Memeorandum).

3 comments:

  1. I note that you wrote this post has generated an "interesting discussion," if "high-faluting" (actually, I was raised in the Ozarks and I think that's spelled "high-falutin'".) Anyway thanks, I take both as high praise. As to being in the minority opinion, well that's pretty much where I live. Cheers.

    [cross-posted at LGM]

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  2. Your post --- i.e., your discussion of these arguments --- is interesting. But I'm referring to the larger left-wing academic position on the "justice" of the killing as "high falutin." You would be included there only indirectly, by the fact of also being an academic. I'm an academic, so I like the arguments, etc., but my common sense makes me cringe sometimes at the otherworldliness of the debate.

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  3. Charli is just pissed that Osama wasn't captured and put through the type of show trial that she and her fellow America and freedom-haters wax orgasmic over.

    I mean, this was going to be their big chance to use a major leader of the 7th Century illiterate, he-man woman-hater camel-hygienist barbarians to slam America yet again, and they were deprived of it.

    BTW: I wonder just how long Charli would survive under Sharia law?


    -Dave

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