Folks, people from 60 nations died in the attack. They may want to have a piece of Osama’s hide as well.
I basically agree with those who want him to die in combat or commit suicide before being captured. If he’s taken alive though, it should be life imprisonment. Let’s not give him the martyrdom that he wants.
It’s true that other members of Al Queda may try to get him released by using hostages as bargaining chips, but that shouldn’t influence our decision. These people will try to plot further terrorist attacks against the U.S. regardless of whether or not we have OBL alive. We can’t make our policy on such issues based on the threat of more terrorism.
Interesting point, but there’s a problem. He would need a lawyer who is legally allowed to practice in America, and the sane and respectable law firms would never agree to defend the guy. Most likely, he would only be able to get a total nutbar lawyer, just like Timothy McVeigh did.
People from all over the world have died in attacks planned or organized by Osame bin Laden. But the country that gets him first gets to decide his punishment; that just how it works. It’s at least possible that some country other than the U.S. will capture him.
I’ve been a lifelong opponent of the death penalty. First of all, I don’t want any chance of anyone innocent being executed. (Jesus was innocent and executed.) Second reason is that I don’t want to share the responsibility for putting someone to death, that makes me culpable too, even if they are guilty as this is something we do collectively. I have no problem with long term incarceration for violent offenders. Incarceration for non-violent offenses (stealing pizza) should be kept to a minimum.
Does that mean that people like Timothy McVeigh, Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson, Richard Allen Davis, etc. don’t deserve it and I’d want to do it myself? Well, to quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (underrated film in my opinion), “deserve has nothing to do with it” and “we’ve all got it coming”. But I recognize that part of what civilization is about is prohibiting things we might like to do for a greater good. And no matter how much the perpetrator has it coming, execution is not an act of good, and it does not undo the evil.
But let’s move on to war, rather than criminal justice. If our enemies will not make peace with us in such a way that we are confident we have a good peace, then we have a choice: submit to their tyranny, or be prepared to defend our nation with deadly force. Sun Tzu, Clauswitz and Machiavelli have amply discussed what you must be prepard to do to win war, and have the moral authority to wage it.
What does moral authority and massive deaths in war have to do with each other. Example. In the Gulf War (a war I supported) we fought a war for oil and against aggression, in that order. We were prepared to and did kill about 100,000 sons, brothers, fathers of Iraqis. Yet we stopped killing them (Bush I team, same as Bush II team) before the aggressor was dead. We left the enemy intact when what would have removed him was keeping the war on until his staff turned on him. This would have resulted in more deaths of Iraqis and some allied forces. But in 10 years of sanctions and atrocities against Kurds (whom Bush asked to rise up and then let them get slaughtered) so many more have died and suffered who should not have had the leaders, Bush I, Cheney, and Powell had the moral authority to realize these consequences. That is what they signed up for when they took the jobs, being responsible for waging war and all the awfulness that entails.
As for life imprisonment for Bin Laden, I can’t think of anything more pitiful than Rudolph Hess, murdered with and electrical cord when was 92, having served half a century of his life sentence. (He was strangled by someone else because the cord marks went straight back, not in a V shape). I think that people imprisoned this long should not be allowed to communicate with anyone, including family, on the outside. Hess choose not to ever talk about his Nazi cause, and visited with family, but didn’t talk ideology even with them.
Don’t kill him or put him in solitary. How about general population, where everyone would want a piece of his hide?
He’ll be begging for solitary or a bullet.
Where’s the incintive for a US soldier not to kill Osama? I mean, think about it for a moment. You shoot Osama and you’re going to be on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the world! Oh sure, it might make things a little “unhealthy” for you outside of the US, but inside of the US, look at all the benefits you’ll get: People will offer you jobs, sexual favors, money, discounts, and anything else you could want, all because you killed Osama! Hmmmm…
I think Jay Leno’s wife summed up the problem well and offered the perfect solution:
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If we kill him, he’s a martyr.
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If we keep him in jail, we’re a target for terrorism from people trying to free him.
So…here’s what we do. Send him to some of those doctors in Europe, and give him a complete sex change operation.
Then send him back to Afghanistan. See how he likes being a woman in “his” world.
Seriously, though, I just don’t know what we should do. I’m against the death penalty as a rule, so I hope he dies in battle, and we have his body to prove that he’s dead.
Extreme facts make for bad law. Finding one person who truly deserves to be executed does not necessarily mean that the death penalty should be applied to all cases, particularly to those cases where there was judicial error, an especially to those cases where an truly innocent person was wrongfully convicted.
There is a very high rate for judicial error in American capital cases. Check out the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Liebman Study. Yes, some nasty folks get off on technicalities, but such a high rate of judicial error also means that there are truly innocent people being wrongfully convicted.
In my country, Canada, a number of truly innocent people have recently been released from jail after years of incarceration for what at one time would have been capital crimes. If we still had the death penalty here, they would be dead. Instead, they are alive and kicking and free. Our Supreme Court noted in Burns that Marshall, Milgaard, Morin, Sophonow and Parsons all should remind us of wrongful convictions.
These innocent people are my reason for opposing a death penalty. I don’t want an innocent person to be executed, and if that means that some guilty people get off Scott free, and other guilty people are jailed for lengthy periods but not executed, then so be it. That is a trade I am willing to make, for I do not wish my country to execute innocents as an unavoidable by-product of execution of the guilty.
On a less personal note, one might also think about Osama and the global perspective. Upon capture, he cold be handed over to the International Criminal Court, which follows internationally accepted general principals of criminal law, and accordingly does not permit the death penalty. It was established specifically to handle evil such as Bin Laden. I expect that this would not satisfy America, but it would go a long way to show the world that America is part of the international community, rather than a muscle-man on a tear. This might be worth considering in as much as America may need international cooperation in hunting down the bastard.
Here’s to hoping he does not survive long enough to be captured.
CnoteChris, think of what it’ll be like thirty years from now when you are trying to explain this statement to a new batch of college grads who never lived through the horror of the attack: “Truth is, I think we should hunt down Osama and his ilk and blow them the fuck up.”
Now you see both sides of the death penalty debate. In other words, Osama Bin Laden is the answer to the question “Would it be possible for someone to be so deviant that we should resort to the death penalty?”
I don’t think it’s immoral for you to think this. In fact, it’s healthy to debate yourself sometimes. I have been back and forth on the death penalty issue and tend to feel more enlightened for seeing (and experiencing) all sides of the issue. I’d ultimately like to see Bin Laden humiliated by this, even if it takes dying to get it done. the important thing is that we can’t tolerate others following his actions. He has to be the last.
I’ve been following this along and not commenting on it simply because I still didn’t know what the problem is on my end.
There should be a problem, but there isn’t.
But this thread has given me a clue to what it may be.
Every time I read through this thread, for instance, I trip up when I run into the post made by Goo above.
What trips me up is the war part. That is, he/she believes this isn’t a war, so the problem is even more profound for him/her.
I can see how that’s a problem. If it wasn’t an act of war, than it must be treated as a criminal act. And if you’re against the death penalty in principal when dealing with criminals, this situation is no different.
But for me-- and what may explain my non-problem with this generally-- is that the crime thing versus war thing isn’t even an issue. I think the actions of the eleventh were clearly an act of war and should be dealt with in kind—go after them harder than they come after you. Someone pokes you with a stick, jab them with a knife.
So, in that sense, I’m fine with it. We kill him? No problem there. In fact, I think it’s necessary and even preferable to the other options.
So maybe that there explains my dual stance and feelings on this matter lately.
At least I think it’s a start.
I posted something to the Pit almost immediately after the terrorist attacks, basically a silly soliloquy to the terrorists, blaming them for making me uncomfortable about my anti-death penalty stance. Only one person responded (rather nastily, even - I believe the word “hypocrite” or the like was batted about). I can’t remember who it was and I’m too lazy to look it up.
Anyhoo, I’m with you. I find it hard to reconcile in my own mind, but it seems to me that in the extremest of cases, such as Osama bin Laden’s, forfeiture of life is appropriate, even to a hardnose like me.
Personally, I hope he gets captured on the lame in a European country, and goes to trial in the International Criminal Court. I am firmly against the death penalty, and especially in this matter.
Two reasons for that:
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civilised people are better than him. Osama bin Laden murders people. Civilised people and nations do not.
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in attacking the WTC and the Pentagon, he symbolically attacked the West and its freedoms and liberties. Let him stand trial and have his hope of freedom rest upon Western standards of justice. If he is found guilty, then let him die in prison an old man (Hesse is a good example). The vast majority of Western countries (with the notable exception of the US) does not have the death penalty. Rotting in gaol is the Western solution to the problem of bin Laden. Death brings martyrdom, not spending your days in solitary.
Wow… Such a unanimous consent about the fate of Osama.
No one seems to want to hear his argument, lest it may wake us up to some of our own shortcomings and misdeeds.
Am I the only one who smells fascism around here?
While I wouldn’t shed a tear if he was killed in Afghanistan, if we capture him, we have an obligation to treat him as innocent until proven guilty. That means a trial, decent treatment, everything. He tried to undermine our democracy, and if we don’t give him the same rights as other accused criminals, he will have done so.
Then if he’s found guilty, we kill him, if for no other reason than to keep his followers from trying to free him by taking more hostages.
>sniff<
yup, I smell it.
Another thing that bothers me…I understand that the evidence against bin Laden is kept under wraps so that intellgence sources abroad aren’t harmed.
But what if there is not enough to secure a conviction, even in the farce of the military court?
Our friend bin Laden would walk.
Something tells me he won’t get to trial.
You know it bugs me that everyone is sure with out a shadow of a doubt that he is guilty, yet worried we can’t prove it. What do the majority of the people know that wouldn’t be admissable in court.
[sub]Psst, CnoteChris I’m a she… just thought I’d save you the problem of having to type he/she each time ! 
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I’ve come to my own decision. I hope he is given an international trial, or at worst, an American trial and sentenced to life imprisonment, if guilty.
I said before that it would be nice if he was killed in action, so I didn’t have to test my beliefs. I have thought long and hard about this since then and I don’t want him killed. I want a fair trial, without a media circus (even though I know I’m pushing shit uphill wanting that last point! :))
Two wrongs have never made a right.
I have a problem with this, Dale.
It is too subjective for my liking. I think the law should try and remain as objective as possible. It is your opinion that this behaviour is deviant enough for the death penalty, but who chooses where the cut-off is for deviant behaviour ?
I have heard of crimes which are far more deviant than 9/11, but that is also my opinion, and I’m sure thousands would disagree.
To be honest (and IMHO only) I don’t think you have shown me the other side of the death penalty debate. Feel free to keep trying 
Goo, I’d sure like to see evidence of something more “deviant” than the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Unless you mean the Holocaust, I sure can’t think of anything.
You bring up an interesting point, Jane, and it’s one I’ve been wondering myself- had the allied forces been given the chance to take Hitler alive, would they have?
Would it have been better to kill him straight away, or spare him and put him on trial?