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RootieKazootie commented on the blog post Please Don’t Call It Justice
In a perfect world, Osama bin Laden would have been captured alive and brought to trial. In the world we live in, however, this was only ever the remotest of possibilities.
bin Laden always traveled with a highly fanatical, extremely well-armed security detail, all of them willing to die for the leader of their cause. In addition, if reports are accurate, bin Laden also attempted to use one of his wives as a human shield, hiding behind her while he shot at the Seal Team operators that had come for him.
Given the previously demonstrated craven characteristics of the man, he was never going to allow such a thing to happen. So, given the alternatives (never bringing him to answer for his crimes because a legal, court defined justice was impossible because he couldn’t be taken alive) and going ahead and attempting his capture with the understanding that if American lives were seriously jeopardized and lost to accomplish taking him alive, to just go ahead and kill him on the spot, I’ll happily go with “B” every time.
It’s not a perfect world and even the Constitution doesn’t guarantee perfect justice, only a chance for justice. bin Laden already had enough lives to answer for and no more should be required to assuage anyone’s personal feelings of guilt at a perceived incomplete justice.
