Michael Moore: Osama bin Laden Had a Right to a Trial

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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2011/05/michael-moore-osama-bin-laden-was-executed/1

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[kensei]

Part of feels that if such monsters as Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez etc. had a right to a trial (or Tim McVeigh as perhaps more of an apt comparison) then Bin Laden surely did too. Would Americans not have been pleased by images of him in orange prison fatigues and shackles?

But his acts were more than crimes, they were acts of war, a war he himself declared- literally, on video, declaring open season on all Americans. At that time I remember thinking- does the constitution allow for war between the U.S. and an organization, or even an individual person, or only with another nation? Whatever the case, 9/11 was much more than an act of mass murder (and in fact was not the reason for Bin Laden being added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List- he was never charged with it as a crime). It was an act of war against the U.S., and in war, some combattants do get taken prisoner as those down in Gitmo but some are killed in battle. Zarqawi (sorry if spelling is incorrect), the head of Al Quaida in Iraq- when the Americans located his hiding place they didn't try to capture him alive. They dropped a bomb through his roof. When Seal Team 6 found Bin Laden, perhaps they should have tried to take him alive so he could have been used as the ultimate source of intelligence and then put on trial, but it was the heat of battle and one never knows how such things will turn out. That was a chance he took when he started the war. I would have been pleased to see him on trial, but I am equally pleased that he is dead.

[Phil H]

In an ideal world, the "democratic" nations would demonstrate their civilisation by allowing everyone the right of a trial.

To that end, we tried the surviving Nazi's after the Second World War (Numberberg), and we are trying Yugoslavian/Serbian alleged war criminals at The Hague right now. Such is the rule of law, respect for human rights and the superiority of the western "model" shown, in comparison to those states where arbitrary justice is carried out - Stalin's purges may have followed so-called show trials.

The question for me is, could someone like Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden, if tried, have expected a fair trial? Were the Nuremburg trials "fair" or was the verdict always pre-judged? true Hess and Speer among others were imprisoned, but if Himmler or Goering (who put up a good defence) EVER have been let off a death sentence?

Then, for Osama, what would the sentence have been - death? How would America have viewed that? Would it have been an ending? Or the beginning of rancour, debate and dissention - after all many in the West now regard the death penalty as barbaric in its own right?

I would be concerned were it ever shown conclusively that the squad sent to Abbotobad were a "death squad" and that they were instructed that Osama should not survive. (I could imagine the Bush regime doing so, but Obama's?)

Yet, given that America tried to kill Osama with cave busting bombs and have killed other Al Qaeda leaders with "drones" - is an "assassination" altogether out of kilter with that approach?

Finally - for now - how would a trial come across to the American and world opinion? We may wish, or even believe, that things should be black and white. But politics, and international politics, is almost by definition grey/dirty.

So what if Osama revealed undercover dealings with previous US administrations? What if he drew a picture that developed anti-US feeling in the world? If he used his testimony to seek to draw together fundamentalists in the islamic world, to create an ant-Western jihad? Would that be welcome? Would it do good?

My initial answer to the thread is thus, that while I don't deny that he SHOULD have been tried, the way things worked out might not be entirely without benefit.

hil

[Adam Went]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Bin Laden could have been caught alive if it was really intented to be so, but that the chance to do him in there and then was too good to pass up.

The thought that first occurred to me was also the Nuremberg trials post WWII, when the penalties could have been much more harsh - victors' justice and what not. And yet the trial was carried out thoroughly and was a victory for justice via the proper channels rather than simply revenge.

So it is a valid point that, no matter how bad the criminal (and there have been many worse in the annals of history than Bin Laden who have been allowed a trial, even if the result is a foregone conclusion), if there is the opportunity to do so then a trial should be performed - even if it's for no other purpose than to ask the question WHY.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Phil H]

...if there is the opportunity to do so then a trial should be performed - even if it's for no other purpose than to ask the question WHY.

But would a trial have answered that question, Adam?

It seems to me that Osama has spelled out quite clearly WHY he and his organisation did what they did. They fear and hate the west (especially the US) for its culture, economic power and influence and even existence for both political and religious reasons. What else would a trial reveal?

Did Nuremberg reveal anything we did NOT know previosuly about the logic and rationale of the Third Reich and its leaders?

I am quite clear, as I have said, that in an ideal world, men and women like Osama should be tried - that is the RIGHT way to proceed. But I don't deceive myself that the process achieves much more than allowing justice to be seen to be done.

phil

[The Good Michael]

There really should be no question of Bin Laden's right to a trial. America has for too long worked in such clandestine ways; in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and others, that we have done more illegitimate acts in our attempts to control other nations than we have taken legal means. A trial shows a regard for law. Assassinations show lawlessness. Logically, there is no argument against a trial. Emotionally, there are. I take logic any day over emotion.

Mike

[Adam Went]

Phil H:

What you say is true but then much of what Bin Laden has preached over the past decade has been propaganda, used to incite more violence against the Western Allies and provoke people - essentially, to stir the pot. All of his statements came from safe locations where he was surrounded by his own people, able to spout whatever nonsense he felt would have the biggest effect on his followers at the time.

Having him on trial, surrounded by his former enemies, might do one of two things: it might make him rant and rave all the more, as some of the Bali bombers have shown in recent years; or it might make him be more open and honest about the true reasons of what drove him to mastermind what he did, and answer more questions about how it was done, who else was involved, etc etc. Let him come face to face with the families of those innocents who were killed.

I think Nuremberg did achieve something from the Germans. Naturally you had those who stuck fast to their former regime but then you also had those who ended up giving great insight into what happened and why and who was involved - look at Albert Speer as a prime example, who quite possibly saved his own neck by doing so.

Obviously this is all just hypothetical now, but the short of is that putting him to trial could not have done any harm....and would have been the case anyway had be been captured alive.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

I don't know. It seems less that Osama Bin Laden deserved a trial as much as we as a nation deserved a trial. Bin Laden didn't believe in trials, so he was not going to benefit from one, existentially speaking. But we would have. We would have been able to be the kind of county that takes someone who has harmed us unspeakably, and not allow him and his buddies to deny us the desire to do the right thing, even for someone who doesn't deserve it. Moore is not wrong. We let the terrorists win. I'm just not sold on the idea that this particular instance is where they won.

Because the opposite side of the coin is common sense. On a very small scale. If you draw a weapon, without the clear intent to take a life, you are likely going to die. Capture is great if you can swing it, but once a weapon is out, capture is off the table. Because quite frankly, a guy with an automatic weapon and a decent amount of spare ammo can kill dozens of people through a doorway before someone can get a gas grenade in. A trial is not worth 15 dead soldiers. He had the option to allow himself to be captured instead of killed, he chose not to take it, and this is the result. He could have surrendered, he made his choice. It doesn't mean it wasn't assassination, but he was not helpless to control the outcome. Capture was on the table, until the first gun came out. No different than when the SWAT team tries to get a gunman out of a building.

[Mayerling]

Basically (to me) this was a "lose-lose" situation for the U.S., and we chose the lesser losing proposition.

We would have have difficulties spiriting Bin Laden out of his hiding place in that questionable ally Pakistan. It would not have been long before he Pakistanis would have pressured us into returning him to them (and he would have escaped again).

If he was put on trial he would have delayed matters as long as possible, possibly insisting not on American law but either an international tribunal (like the Hague) or one that had "sharia" law to consider his fate. If he got to the trial he would have used it like Hitler used his trial in Munich in 1923 to publicize his cause and claim it was right to defend itself. Yes it would have stiffened Islamic zealots around the globe to continue. Bin Laden would have prepared himself for martyrdom.

By killing him we would take flack from pseudo-liberals like Moore that we again failed to live up to our so called love of jury trials and justice. Moore and his ilk are also quick to jump on the system for those questionable trials of the past where somebody got executed here and the social pressures leading to the executions were unfair (or seemed to be). Best known would be Sacco and Vanzetti, or the Rosenbergs, or Joe Hill (which recently was in the news again that the actual killer was a career criminal who later worked for Al Capone, but who was let go of due to determination to destroy the I W W that Hill represented). Those trials are nauseating to us, but were (unfortunately) par and parsel of their times.

I wonder, would Moore like to see the membership of the NRA put on trial for conspiracy to facilitate all gunshot murders in this country, or if he would like somebody to wipe them out in a massacre? Or bankers and car manufacturers for that matter. He probably would say the trial, but I really wonder about that or him.

Jeff