The BBC is reporting that some of the sons of Osama bin Laden have given a statement to the New York Times protesting that their father was not captured alive and put on trial. They say that a trial was needed so that “truth is revealed to the people of the world.”
Sorry, boys, but you’re not going to find any sympathy for that position from this quarter. Osama bin Laden himself was a mass killer who showed no regard for international law or the rights of the innocent victims of 9/11 who were killed in cold blood for no reason — or the rights of any of the other victims of the many terrorist acts that al Qaeda planned, bankrolled, or executed over the years at bin Laden’s direction. Nor do I think old mumble-mouth was much known for “truth.” For his many confessed crimes, Osama bin Laden deserved to die. I’m not among those who are squeamish about the circumstances of his death or the way in which his remains were disposed of.
There’s not only a silly double standard at play here. I suspect that many of those who argue that the United States should have engaged in heroic measures to take bin Laden alive and should have put him on trial are simply sorry that bin Laden, ever the egoist who enjoyed watching himself pontificate, did not get a final chance to occupy the world’s stage in a protracted trial that would become a circus and a forum for his violent, anti-western philosophies. I’m glad that he didn’t get that opportunity, and that he left this world without so much as a whimper. It was a fitting end for a bad, bad man.
Webner House 