Osama

I have mixed feelings. I don't know that capturing him was feasible, but that's not the issue. I don't think his being dead is bad thing, nor a good thing. It's just a thing.

What I don't think it was is "justice". It was revenge. Which is, in it's way fine. A lot of people feel better now. Ok.

But justice, justice would be him in chains, in court, the evidence for his deeds laid out, and a chance for him to rebut them made available.

Justice.

There was a chance for that, something like nine years ago. Afghanistan was willing to turn him over to the Hague, or some other neutral party. Bush wouldn't go for it, and the Afghans didn't think bin Laden could get a fair trial.

He didn't get any trial. His guilt seems a lot more certain than not. He bragged of it. It fit the strange model of the world he had, where the US was in the way of toppling the dictatorships he saw as sitting on the Muslims of the world. He blamed us for the continuing plight of the Palestinians. He was offended that Saudi Arabia allowed us into the country to oust Hussein from Kuwait. He was more offended that we were still there ten years later.

He should have died hereafter. A trial. Not for his sake, for ours. A chance to show the world that he was wrong. That we weren't "The Great Satan". A chance for us to let him plead his case, and show it for the pack of lies and conspiracy theories it was.

That couldn't have hurt us. He wasn't going to convince anyone who didn't already believe him, and those who were giving him the benefit of some doubt were more likely to be convinced of his madness.

But now, esp. with the burial at sea, the less than credible accounts of Pakistan being completely in the dark, and the sense that there was never any expectation of taking him alive... now he is a martyr.

And Justice was not done.

On the poltics of prosecution.

My post about bin Laden's death is actually colored by other events, related to the incarceration of Bradley Manning. Manning is accused of violating his obligation to protect classified information.

Obama, a couple of weeks ago, was challenged on the conditions of Manning's pre-trial confinement. Manning's confinement has been (up until very recently; he has been transferred from the Marine Brig at Quantico to a holding facility at Ft. Leavenworth) in apparent violation of military regulation, and by any measure draconian.

Obama's response to the question was chilling, "He broke the law."

Which may be true, but we don't know that yet. Obama, who made a point in his run for president of having taught Constitutional Law knows that in our system we have a presumption of innocence. A defendant must be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty.

The State can't just clap someone in irons and say, "She committed a crime," nor are we supposed to be in the business of punishing someone before the trial, since it's possible they will be acquitted.

So for that to be the justification use for someone's being stripped of all but their underwear, not allowed to sleep more then 20 minutes at a time; without a blanket, an in a lighted room, with nothing to read, nor listen to (save the thoughts in his own head), all before the trial... that bothers me.

For the president to say such a thing as if that somehow made it unreasonable to question that sort of treatment... that's a real problem.

That's the sort of thing which makes me wonder if he deserves to be president, because it's the sort of thing I complained about his predecessor doing, and it's no different when Obama does it than when Bush did it, or some tinpot dictator does it somewhere else.