Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

He was a Legitimate Target

I can understand the perverse delight my friends on the right are getting from noting that after all the caterwauling by the left about the "torture" of Al Qaeda detainees by the Bush administration, it's on the left's watch that an unarmed, dirty, sickly, prematurely aged old man, living in a run-down dump in a run-down country gets whacked on orders of the President.  Not just any President, mind you, but The One, The One Who Would Heal the Planet, Sooth All Troubles, the Post-American President, the Citizen of the World, The Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the, uh, well, you get it.  I know it's fun to speculate about maybe bringing Obama and Panetta to trial after 2012 for ordering an assassination. Yes, yes, pay back, and all that. Obama and company are a bunch of hypocrites; we all know that.

We all have been tempted, and on occasion have given in to that temptation, but using the Osama killing to make the above point about Obama, Holder, and the rest is not a good strategy. If one thing marks conservatives from the loony libs it's our genuine concern for the country, its institutions, and its standing in a very dangerous world.  We conservatives must, therefore, stand with the President on this issue. We cannot treat him  as the left would have treated Bush, and, in fact, did treat Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, etc., all through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Likewise the debate about whether he was or was not still in control of AQ is irrelevant.  It is as irrelevant as debating whether a delusional Hitler in his last few days in the the bunker was or was not in control of anything.  Doesn't matter.  They both were legitimate targets for what they had done if nothing else.

The bottom line is that Osama was a legitimate target for both capture and killing.  This is a new world in which the old concept of war as a declared conflict between states no longer necessarily holds.  Osama and his well-funded international organization had declared war on the United States; he repeatedly had acted on that declaration even before the 9/11 attack on the US mainland. He was a legitimate target whether or not he was armed at the time, and whether or not he put up any resistance. He was as legitimate a target as was Heydrich, whom the British trained and delivered a Czech assassination team to kill; as legitimate as Yamamoto whom the U.S. successfully targeted in a brilliantly executed early example of coordination between military and intel; and as legitimate as Rommel, strafed by the RAF and almost killed in the days after D-Day.  Heydrich did not fight back; he had no option to surrender--he died, as he deserved, a slow agonizing death from his injuries. Yamamoto was in a transport plane when he got jumped by P-38s; he could not fight back; he could not surrender.  Rommel was in his staff car when he got strafed and wounded by a Spitfire; he did not fight back; he did not have an option to surrender.

On killing Osama, I am with Obama . . . if that isn't a rallying cry, I don't know what is . . .

8 comments:

  1. Yes, I'm with Obama on killing Osama, too. I'd be with any US President who got him.

    Osama--right after 9/11, he and his Falastin fan club scream in triumph about how only Muslims would be brave enought to kill themselves to bring down the WTC and Pentagon, but the minute American bombs sent OBL skedaddling for the Pak border, he whines that its was the JOOOOOOOOOOZ whodunnit.

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  2. I don't think any serious Conservative is arguing that Obama, Holder, et al., should face any sort of blowback for this. Rather, as you likely know, we think this vindicates the Bush post-9/11 anti-terror architecture. You're right that Obama acted correctly here and I won't dispute or try to make hay out of it. Instead, I'd use this to argue for re-instituting Bush's successful interrogation policies.

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  3. Ok let's review. SoDamned Insane was captured, tried, sentenced, and executed. For this the GWB admin was continuously hectored by the Left. UBL was not captured, not tried, not sentenced but was executed. For this the Left is trumpeting the manliness of Obumbler. I am so confused. I thought the Left wanted terrorists to be dealt with by the justice system, the way that the GWB admin did with SoDamned Insane. Did I get this wrong?

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  4. Well, TheOldMan, you did get it wrong if you expect logical thought progressions from lefties. They are genetically challenged in that area, and can only recover "normal" brain function after years of being forced into using craniums for more than hair racks. Give them time. Some of them need lot's of time. Some, unfortunately, will never make it.

    Btw, I'm with BDiddyNoVA here.

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  5. Nice Poster, but wasn't it $25,000,000.00 ?

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  6. With respect, Reinhard Heydrich DID fight back against his assassins. In fact, in pursuing them (and shooting at them) he may well have done himself sufficient injury beyond those from the bomb blast to make his death certain.

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  7. It was actually a Canadian, Charlie Fox, flying with 412 Sqn of the RCAF who strafed Rommel. Otherwise spot on post. As I like to point out to mindless Human Rights drones, we didn't have to send people to Guantanamo, we could have summarily executed them on the battlefield according to the Geneva Conventions.

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  8. I agree with what has been said above. There does seem squeamishness about shooting an unarmed man; and yet senior commanders don't usually lug around heavy machine guns etc. They are lightly armed and fair targets. That is why in a well-run army the officers have higher fatality rates than the enlisted men, and the general rank officers have the highest fatality rates of all.

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