May 4th, 2011
A few stray observations on the event of Osama bin Laden’s timely death:
* I have some sympathy with the complaint, put forward by Glenn Greenwald and some others on the very far left, that it’s a little unsettling to see so much “joy” in America over the last few days. The specific emotions of “joy” and “elation” should probably not be connected with the killing of our enemies in the West. There is a particular kind of civilization that runs into the streets weeping and screaming and shooting AK-47s in the air and ululating whenever they find out that their forces have successfully killed an enemy. And that civilization ain’t us. (To be clear: No one in America–at least not that I saw–was ululating and popping off AKs. But there was a lot of celebration, some of it pretty jubilant.)
What is proper in the West are other, related emotions: relief that a bad guy now haunts us only in the spectral sense; pride in the skill and vigor of our countrymen who tracked him down and then carried out the operation; and above all, satisfaction. Satisfaction that retribution has been paid, that something like justice has been done. Moreover, I think that if you drilled down, these would probably be the emotions that most Americans were actually feeling this week and not, as some on the far left believe, mere joy and jubilation. Ramesh Ponnuru has a typically clear-eyed and judicious exploration of this at the Washington Post.
* The demands of the Church are a pretty tough row to hoe under the best of circumstances. And praying for one’s enemies, especially when the enemy is Osama bin Laden, is a demand that seems particularly impossible. That said, there’s a reason the Church says we should do it.
* Despite the hunger for news, we should probably take just about everything we read over the next week or so with more salt than usual. The operation seems to have been so complicated, and the backstory behind it so long in the making, that it could be a very long time before we actually have any accurate sense of who decided what, did what, and then, what actually happened on the ground
* It would be nice if Mark Bowden could just sit down and write the book tomorrow. Because that’s probably the best account we’re going to get. Penguin did just hand Bowden a bag full of cash and tell him to drop whatever else he’s doing to get on this story, right? Because they would be insane not to. And whatever they wind up paying him, it won’t be enough. He should get Rowling money.
* Does this help Obama’s reelection effort? Probably. The killing of Osama bin Laden is good for America and everything that’s good for America is good for the incumbent president. That said, I suspect that this moment doesn’t change much of the structural contours of the race. And while it may not be likely, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where some revelation about the manhunt or some future related event makes Obama’s reelect harder. George W. Bush was flying pretty high after his “Mission: Accomplished” moment.
* The president this is probably best for is actually George W. Bush. If it turns out that Gitmo and EITs were a part of what brought bin Laden down, then history will likely give him some well-deserved credit. And by-the-by, President Obama takes just about every opportunity to club Bush over the head–even going so far as to insinuate in his address on Sunday night that getting bin Laden wasn’t Bush’s highest priority. Bush, by contrast, is behaving with particular grace and propriety, releasing just a short statement and then declining to go to New York to share the spotlight with Obama. Good on him.
* Galley Friend X emails:
I’m of two minds as I watch the Right and Left use OBL’s capture and death as the opportunity to re-fight all of the longstanding Global War on Terror fights: enhanced interrogation; unilateralism, GITMO, etc. On the one hand, it may be true that the search and apprehension of Obama factually disproves the Left’s longstanding mantras: GITMO did more harm than good; “torture” doesn’t work, etc. On the other hand, I wish that the Right could have allowed us all to enjoy first few days after OBL’s demise before starting the “see I told you so” game.
That said, it seems to me that perhaps the most powerful, and least avoidable, “see I told you so” moment in all of this has nothing to do with Gitmo, waterboarding, or other alleged contributing factors to OBL’s demise. Instead, I’m struck by the legal implications of OBL’s actual death. If, as some reports indicate, OBL was effectively captured first and shot second, then Obama may have blatantly violated the Geneva Conventions and other laws of war governing the treatment of prisoners.
The Left repeatedly has argued that these laws govern the capture and detention of al Qaeda members, despite the fact that al Qaeda is not a nation, does not openly carry arms and wear uniforms, etc. If that is true, then by their logic OBL would have been entitled to those protections immediately upon his capture. If JSOC actually captured him, and then put bullets in his head, then they would have committed a summary execution in violation of the laws protecting POWs.
Of course, I don’t agree with the Left’s premises: the Geneva Conventions did not clearly protect al Qaeda; the Geneva Conventions do not supersede domestic law (including the President’s constitutional authority); and in any event I really don’t care about the Geneva Conventions in this context.
But someone should call the Left, including Obama, out on this point, once the circumstancs of OBL’s death are reasonably clear.
In an update, X adds,
I just saw the coverage of Holder’s new testimony on the subject of the legality of OBL’s killing. He said that it’s absolutely legal, because it’s legal to kill a “commander in the field,” just as we shot down a Japanese commander’s airplane in WWII.
If that’s the best he can do, then I suddenly have very serious doubts. The laws of war almost certainly draw a distrinction between (1) shooting down an enemy’s airplane and (2) putting a bullet in an unarmed enemy’s head, in his bedroom, where there is no chance of the enemy’s escape.
I would love — LOVE — to see Holder argue that the US can shoot any unarmed terrorist in his bedroom, even when the terrorist stands no chance of escape.
* Why is the media obsessing over all the little stuff, like pictures of the body and profiling of the SEALs? Because there are only two really big new stories going forward–(1) how the decision-making behind the operation and the actual op itself went down; and (2) what the frack the real story is with Pakistan. And we know basically nothing about either of those stories right now.
So stuff like this supposed “insider” account of how Valerie Jarrett was pushing Obama to abdicate on the decision, and how Panetta and Clinton basically strong-armed him into acting, is basically useless. Is it plausible? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. Lots of things in life are plausible. And who would this “insider” be? There can’t be but 50 people who would know everything this single figure claims to know. If someone in that super high-up group is going to leak, they’re going to do it to a random website and not Bob Woodward? (I wouldn’t even mention this stuff except that, inexplicably, Memeorandum has a whole thread based on it.)
By the same token, Foreign Policy had a post up this morning with a report from Abbattobad. The piece itself is worthwhile reportage, but the conclusions–that the Pakistani governing elite has been selling the West a bill of goods about the country’s populist Islamist leanings because the fellow who Twittered the bin Laden op is a totally normal guy–seem wholly unjustified. Maybe the mass of the Pakistani people really are a bunch of fine, middle-class strivers with Twitter accounts and coffee houses. But maybe not. One data point doesn’t mean much in a country of 187 million people. Is this a clarifying event in regards what the “real” Pakistan is? Perhaps. But my own reaction is that we should be more circumspect about thinking we understand what’s really going on in Pakistan today than we were a week ago.
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I would say that the insider is Biden, but everyone knows he isn’t one of the 50 or so people with this type of access.
I’m happy Obama decided against releasing the photos. They would not have convinced anyone who doubts Osama is dead. So the only reason left to release the photos was to satisfy the bloodlust of Americans who just want to see Osama dead. To quote Homer Simpson: That’s not America, that’s not even Mexico. -
“I would love — LOVE — to see Holder argue that the US can shoot any unarmed terrorist in his bedroom, even when the terrorist stands no chance of escape.”
Having a chance of escape or being unarmed has nothing to do with it. An enemy combatant who drops his weapon and flees can still be shot in the back, no problemo per every law of land warfare class I’ve ever sat through. The question your friend brings up only matters if Bin Laden actually actively surrendered or was captured and you’ve got some sort of scenario where a detained Bin Laden was shot in the head.
The ROE for the mission defines proportionality and also establishes the sort of fires authorized in the attack, but there’s no obligation on the part of the war fighter to physically wrestle down a target just because they are unarmed or ‘have no chance of escape’.
To put it another way: had we dropped 30+ JDAMs and tomahawks on the compound, the legality of the action would not hing on whether Bin Laden was unarmed or in a position with no chance of escape.
That being said, the left has refined hypocrisy on these issues into an artform, and your correspondent is right to call them out accordingly.
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Galley Friend X’s analysis is a good read, except the first “whither the back and forth for political gain” paragraph. This is naive, and the GOP strikes me (in this post 2000 Florida recount world, when MoveOn, Kos, Soros, et al. quit fucking around, dropped the gloves and took over the Democratic party) as always being naive, surprised and reactive when the left takes every opportunity to go for the political jugular.
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Not sure your tongue-clucking over the post killing celebrations is justified. America’s got a ways to go before it joins the AK47 blasting/partying nations of the Earth. America love has been nearly dismantled for this generation of celebrants; OBL’s death gave them a apature, free and clear; the mass murderer of Americans is dead – go USA! They took it – good for them.
BTD May 5, 2011 at 12:04 am
Disagree pretty strongly with most of this, which is a rarity for this site. But that’s theology I guess.
As an aside: Memeorandum’s background method is completely ludicrous, and it often elevates these things that are poorly sourced (remember the Nikki Haley sex scandal?) and silly. I’ve had pieces linked there that had little or no traffic, and then I’ve had pieces linked by Glenn, HotAir, etc. that never showed up. Weird.