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Battle Brother Ambrosius wrote:So you honestly think that just because a country protects a criminal, you have the right to offend their airspace as much as you want?

In a word, yes.

If you harbor a stateless actor who has declared war on our country and effected attack(s) in pursuance of same, either you hand him over, or you are his ally and will treated accordingly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lux_Lucis wrote:Wasn't Bin Laden unarmed when they found him?

Who cares? It matters not. Are you saying if we have a military team in the field, and we spy one of their generals out in the open, unarmed, we would not be allowed to shoot at him?

I hate to come down on what I am painfully aware is the Bush\Cheney side of the fence, but I do not consider Osama to have been a criminal, but rather a military target, a stateless actor more akin to a pirate then a soldier.

Would it be fair to say that in your view the USA should have declared war on Pakistan?

Not necessarily, to my thinking. I think the primary interest, specifically for Osama, would be removing him with as little loss of life as possible all around as is technically feasible while still accomplishing the mission. I think Pakistans shielding of him deserves consequences, but not necessarily rising to those of full-blown hostilities as their shielding of him is really a tangential issue. I do think it's possible and even acceptable to have limited hostilities without declaring war, and have no problem with our government performing black operations against unambiguous hostile non-citizen actors when it's in the best interests of the national security of the United States of America as deemed by the President and as signed off for by Congress with an authorization for use of force, even if it remains classified.

Osama wasn't a domestic criminal. He was a self-described enemy combatant who declared war on the US and vowed to keep killing as many Americans as he could. Based on these facts and the history of what he had done or ordered done the seals had no reason to capture him. It wasnt a police action, it was a military strike. It was also carried out with minimal collatoral damage and much restraint considering we could have turned the house and surrounding into glass if we really wanted to.

It was also important to prevent his supporters from denying his death or having relics to prop up his martyrdom. We killed him and took he body. That is about as clean and precise in purpose as you could ask for and prevented his pakistani sympathizers from coming into play...

Why did we bother trying the Nazis are Nurenburg, then?

To start

The indictments were for:
1.Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
2.Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3.War crimes
4.Crimes against humanity

Octorber was the kicked off date for the trials
The full extent of the Nazi Apparatus was seen
death camps
concentration camps
slave labor
to name a few

As bad as OBL was, and he was bad, he just didn't have the power to be as bad as the Nazis were.