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[N.U.]

You all should be rejoicing. The Emmanuel Goldstein of our age was actually killed, meaning a shift in direction away from an Orwellian conclusion; something the last administration seemed content in pushing toward.

[Agonistes]

I think that the US would later have paid dearly for not intervening in WWII when they did (based on the assumption that complete occupation was inevitable). Good for Europe that the US did get involved but I don’t believe that anyone could have slept easily once Hitler had finished gathering up Europe. If no later wars followed, can you imagine having to do the diplomacy thing with Hitler after all that had happened?

Agonistes:

Before I begin, I just want to say that I have no idea how this will be read in the context of the thread because I can't judge the heat.

'  a lion's not going to thinktwice about swiping off a human head just because it is human.  nature does not worship, or hold anything dear.

Nature is really crappy though…  Law, law, not tooth and claw. Circumvent the lion gore.

2)  religion once again remains the highest murder motive of all time.  i would add to that that we aren't the ones who ever said 'the sun never sets on the american empire.'  none of our force application nor bombs nor rushing in at the last minute to save the day has ever resulted in america claiming one single inch of land for themselves (hey, england?  remember the crusades?).  granted, we're a young country, but, there you have it.  no one country that is criticizing us hasn't got a checkered past...some of them REEEEAAALLLY checkered.  in comparison, this was a fucking night at the opera.

Religion is where people look for solutions when they can’t extract solutions from life at source. There’s a lot of crazy in religious fundamentalism but it’s not surprising that people pick the games they can “win” when they have little fighting chance of rationally putting away the fears/deprivations/pressures that surround their lives...

 + Empire as a national hobby (so to speak) was never just about taking land. Land is but one of a number of desirable resources that a nation can take and utilise. The US has land-a-plenty and imported the man power to generate goods and infrastructure. Note: I know the slavery thing is sensitive & I’m not having a dig – What I’m saying is that resources (tradable value) are either discovered or generated via work and a great many of our ancestors were happy to take what others had produced.   

a wartime killing is not murder.  never has been.  never will be.

It’s more about legality and adhering to protocol though.  I don’t know the details so I can’t say anything about how self-consistent they were in that respect.

Final note: None of the above is said in patriotic-finger-wagging-tone. The majority of human beings of any nation (or as a species) are an embarrassment. I can’t show my cat my human race card lest I get flustered. 

lest i come across as a gun-waving redneck, i should probably state myself that i'm anything but patriotic.  i can't even begin to get started on the problems i with our own infrastructure.  i know we're douches when it comes to foreign policy.  and, i know the human race as a whole is pretty ugly when the layers of civilization, thin as they might get, are peeled away.

which is probably why it touches a nerve for me to hear a flip condemnation of an action that seems pretty serious to me.  or even a suggestion that we 'should have' done something so self-destructive that the cost alone is difficult to configure.  there really isn't room for political correctness in war, and if anything, as much as i want PICS OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN and HEAD ON PIKE, this is probably the first action of obama's i've actually admired; the way he handled this demise; quietly confirm it, dump body, end of story till backlash calms down.  it's uncharacteristic of america, and it's actually rather classy of us, i think.  we'll get the pictures eventually; they are known to exist.  they will be released or more likely 'leaked' when this isn't yesterday's news anymore.  

had it been bush, he would have dragged the body through the streets, from new york to l.a.  

incidentally, i didn't mean to imply land as the focal empirical goal; by 'land' i mean basically planting a flag (and yes, i know we do that all the damn time).  i'm not counting what corporations do because i don't consider them part of the political process, even though they have become just exactly that.

[CeeGBee]

basically the issue is that america decided to do a quite open assassination rather than use the law and justice to get things done......I agree that there probably was not a clean way of doing this...but AGAIN if the west wants to be seen as the worlds saviours then we better start acting like it, rather than acting like the biggest and nastiest kid in the playground.......
essentially a bunch of US soldiers murdered a bunch of people and call it justice......not the sort of justice we should be marketing considering the state of things in the world right now

Okay, let's see.....
Scenario 1: US goes to Pakistan's security forces, says "We know where Osama is, we want your
permission to go in and arrest him."  Pakistan says "Sure, we hate that bastard, where is he?"
Next day, Cops show up at the door, find a 'room to let' sign and no sign of previous occupant.

Okay, that doesn't work.

So let's fudge on the legalities just a smidge, to allow for infiltration of Pakistan's government and
military/police by unfriendly elements - Scenario 2: US commandos still sneak in, but instead of just
blowing his head off, they use magickal knock-out gas and arrest him "you have the right to remain
silent....." and all....

After some passage of time, a show-trial is convened wherein a jury or judicial panel of some sort
tells us what we already knew - Osama hates the US and proudly claims responsibility for inciting
and planning the murder of thousands of Americans, American allies, and other people who just made
him unhappy.  Like Saddam, he is hanged in front of the TV cameras.

Of course, in the meantime, several hundred people of various nationalities, ranks, and degrees of
involvment (housewives to soldiers to junior government officials) are kidnapped by Osama-sympathisers,
then murdered when he swings (or, to appease the anti-death-penalty types, that same approximate
number every year he remains in prison unless/until he dies or someone breaks him out)...

How has this served any greater purpose?

It maybe also worth noting that Osama's conception of a lawful trial, were circumstances somehow
reversed, is very different from what we might consider, with the outcome no less pre-ordained.

[Andy Pants]

Anyone want to mention the fact that he was killed UNARMED whilst in his fucking pajamas in fron of his twelve year old daughter? Because if not then I'll be the asshole and say he should have at least been arrested and given a mock trial like Suddame Huseine.

i've heard he was unarmed, and i've also heard he fired a shot and refused to surrender his weapon, while hiding behind one of his wives.  also, it's irresponsible to have your kid nearby when you are at war.

either way, i don't really give a shit.  he was a casualty of war (which he initially declared).  also, one usually doesn't give assassination targets a trial.  besides, a trial is just one more bill america would have to shoulder while the rest of the world screams about how his trial isn't fair enough, and how america didnt have the right to play jury.  

The truth is that's exactly what I expected someone to say.

The bullshit about him being armed and hiding behind his wife is BS propaganda by the way, but I think you probably knew that already.

They were only to arrest him if they could be sure he wasn't wearing a suicide vest i.e. if he was naked, so it was an assassination. I just wish the American government would own up and call it an assassination.

Also, his daughter was there because his family lived with him in his home, so I have no idea what you mean when you say 'it's irresponsible to have your kid nearby when you are at war'. Should retired American combat troops not be allowed to live with their families? He wasn't an active member of Al Qaeda anymore so he was essentially retired. If he committed a war crime whilst he was actually at war (which I'm not disputing), he should have been tried. I agree with CeeGBee that the process would have been arbitrary and the conclusion obvious, but if we don't respect the process of law then the process of law becomes meaningless and anarchy prevails.

But I forget sometimes that the Geneva convention is meaningless now and that justice is simply determined by the whim of whoever has the fanciest guns.

With the American economy going the way it is I wonder who will have the fanciest guns in a couple of decades time, but you're completely right, who really gives a fuck  

[The Angel Raliel]

WW2 the US did not save us in Europe.....they played a part as did everyone else.....the war in the pacific against Japan WAS mainly American led and Britain plus the Antipodeans did a LOT of helping out.....oh that war was stopped by america killing an awful lot of civilians to make a point...Japan could have decided to send a group of assasins to kill the US president for his ordering the mass murder of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...they did not

[The Angel Raliel]

as a final note from me...I know that many of you disagree with me.....I do not have the right answers and I am pretty sure things could have been a lot worse, however my point is that we should learn from our barbaric pasts and IF we are going to involve ourselves in the politics and affairs of other Nations, we have to do so with responsibility and care....not a gung ho bullying attitude

[lentower]

Also peeps, I'm pretty sure the Soviets would have defeated the Germans with or without Americas practically inconsequential involvement. Try reading a book sometime.

true. 

and all of europe would have been communist satellite states,
and much of africa.

the most foolish thing Hilter did was invade Russia

the most foolish thing Japan did was attack Pearl Harbor

[The Angel Raliel]

Ahem...there is SOME evidence to support that Britain knew about pearl Harbour well before it happened...( my gran used to work in a rather specialised part of the war room and corresponded officially with Japanese officers).....it may well have been a tool to tip America's hand and get them to help out in the war in europe..... after all the US was Neutral and even somewhat biased towards germany for the first part of the war

[CeeGBee]

Ahem...there is SOME evidence to support that Britain knew about pearl Harbour well before it happened...( my gran used to work in a rather specialised part of the war room and corresponded officially with Japanese officers).....it may well have been a tool to tip America's hand and get them to help out in the war in europe..... after all the US was Neutral and even somewhat biased towards germany for the first part of the war

Now if you wanna get into serious conspiracy theories......
I have always somewhat suspected that US 'neutrality', and the precise manner in which it was
ended, was carefully calculated - by Roosevelt, in consultation with Churchill - to maximise the
damage that the Nazis and the Communists could do to each other.  For all of the death and
devastation it caused, the outcome of the Pacific War was inevitable - Japan couldn't disable
American industry, nor keep up with it.  They were doomed by simple attrition.

Of course, there are innumerable reasons why such cooperation, 'conspiracy' if you will, can
never be discussed openly, but it would explain a lot of things.


(Andohbythewaybacktotheoriginaltopic - Remember that bit in "Saving Private Ryan" where Private
Jackson, the sniper, said "if you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including
one mile of Adolf Hitler with a clear line of sight, sir... pack your bags, fellas, war's over. Amen."
Now, I don't seem to recall seeing Schickelgruber carrying a rifle [or even wearing a ceremonial knife
most of the time].  Is that a problem?)

[Agonistes]

Anyone want to mention the fact that he was killed UNARMED whilst in his fucking pajamas in fron of his twelve year old daughter? Because if not then I'll be the asshole and say he should have at least been arrested and given a mock trial like Suddame Huseine.

i've heard he was unarmed, and i've also heard he fired a shot and refused to surrender his weapon, while hiding behind one of his wives.  also, it's irresponsible to have your kid nearby when you are at war.

either way, i don't really give a shit.  he was a casualty of war (which he initially declared).  also, one usually doesn't give assassination targets a trial.  besides, a trial is just one more bill america would have to shoulder while the rest of the world screams about how his trial isn't fair enough, and how america didnt have the right to play jury.  

The truth is that's exactly what I expected someone to say.

The bullshit about him being armed and hiding behind his wife is BS propaganda by the way, but I think you probably knew that already.

They were only to arrest him if they could be sure he wasn't wearing a suicide vest i.e. if he was naked, so it was an assassination. I just wish the American government would own up and call it an assassination.

Also, his daughter was there because his family lived with him in his home, so I have no idea what you mean when you say 'it's irresponsible to have your kid nearby when you are at war'. Should retired American combat troops not be allowed to live with their families? He wasn't an active member of Al Qaeda anymore so he was essentially retired. If he committed a war crime whilst he was actually at war (which I'm not disputing), he should have been tried. I agree with CeeGBee that the process would have been arbitrary and the conclusion obvious, but if we don't respect the process of law then the process of law becomes meaningless and anarchy prevails.

But I forget sometimes that the Geneva convention is meaningless now and that justice is simply determined by the whim of whoever has the fanciest guns.

With the American economy going the way it is I wonder who will have the fanciest guns in a couple of decades time, but you're completely right, who really gives a fuck  

a trial would have been fine if the middle eastern governments he'd been hiding under here and there had happily handed him over, but that's not the case.  dude; you don't just get to declare war and then 'retire.'  he was at war; retirement does not absolve one from being marked for death.  number one, it doesn't work that way in a jihad; terrorists don't 'retire.'  they go out with a bang.  moreover, you don't kill five thousand people, and then move to the suburbs and therefore remain untouchable because you say, 'oh, i quit that crazy al-quaida.'  it just plain doesn't work that way.  he wasn't  'at his home.'  he was in hiding, because he was at war.  he's been hunted for a decade.  read his texts, man, HE is the one who called it a war ('jihad' means 'holy war') in the first place.  he marked himself for death by claiming responsibility for the greatest terrorist act probably ever, which wont be duplicated for several hundred years, i'm willing to bet.  but, you're an idiot if you think you can kill five thousand people of any nationality and just....retire.  you have to have been a u.s. president for that (incidentally, i believe george bush deserves the same fate, so yeah).

also, he did not observe the geneva rules, which i am pretty sure have something to do with not flying hijacked planes into buildings full of civilians and firefighters.  since his act of war was less formal and had nothing to do with rules of engagement, why should we respect his 'right' for his brains to remain inside his head?  he is the one who made sure his family was near him, knowing he was the highest profile target in the world at the moment.  yes, target.  in fact he made sure he WAS the highest profile target in the world.  and still kept his family close, the ones that would allow it, that is.  most of his actual family had already disowned him--publicly, that is.

no country would have tried extraditing or trial after that much time hunting for someone, that much money spent, and that many people dead.  not to mention the expense and peril of transporting the sonofabitch to wherever it was we would have taken him and tried to protect him from our own people.  not to mention HIS people trying to rescue him in their particular idiom.  the suicide bombers alone rushing the convoy would be both hilarious and tragic.  not to mention, how are you going to pay a bunch of americans to protect a guy they would happily shoot, themselves?  while it would be admirable to spend god knows how much more money on a 'trial' that has an obvious result, are you cool with more terrorists exacting revenge to try to get us to release him?  it's not your country under the microscope, but i damn sure bet if it was, americans would be helping you guys hunt down the bastard.

also, the geneva convention is generally useless during a war.  not that it's ever been useful to have rules as to how to fight a war, but there you have it.  i don't feel the need to expand on how stupid it is to have wars with rules, because war is not politically correct, nor is it ever fought by rules when it gets into the trenches.  never has been, never will be.


edit:  the american government won't call it an assassination, because the american government does not train or condone assassins, officially.  of course you and i both know that's bullshit, every country has a handful of guys to do dirty work, but e're not allowed to admit it because then the other countries all get mad and fuss.  also, if you would like our, and other, governments to tell the truth all the time and not do this 'publicity dance of lies,' i guess wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which hand fills up the fastest.

[CeeGBee]

[boring historian interpretation]
I would have to call [ahem] strategic bombing in WW2 'the greatest terrorist act ever'.

Whole cities were devastated, with no direct military objective but to undermine the enemy
civilian population's support for the war effort.  Textbook terrorism, and both the Allies and
the Axis did it.  The atom bombs were the ultimate expression of the idea, and could well be
argued to have achieved the desired end.
[/nerdy historian]

[lentower]

Ahem...there is SOME evidence to support that Britain knew about pearl Harbour well before it happened...( my gran used to work in a rather specialised part of the war room and corresponded officially with Japanese officers).....it may well have been a tool to tip America's hand and get them to help out in the war in europe..... after all the US was Neutral and even somewhat biased towards germany for the first part of the war

* there is SOME evidence to support most theories.  there were quite a few people in the US who expected Pearl Harbor.

* you speak as if the US was monolithic.  this is not true of any country, but even more so the US.

* the major thing that keep the US out of the war, was that WWI had convinced enough Americans to not get involved in foreign wars.  some Americans were pro-British, some anti-Axis, some pro-German, etc.

* one of the brilliant moves Stalin made, when Hitler invaded, was to pack up all the factories and machine tools he could, and move them via rail west of the Urals, out of the Nazi's reach.  Which allowed him to build the weapons needed to fight the Nazi's, and not wait for shipments form the US.  Stalin also deeply resented how long it took the Allies to invade Western Europe.  He felt that the Soviet Military took most of the deaths and injuries, because the rest of the Allies waited.

[Shock G]

Anyone want to mention the fact that he was killed UNARMED whilst in his fucking pajamas in fron of his twelve year old daughter? Because if not then I'll be the asshole and say he should have at least been arrested and given a mock trial like Suddame Huseine.

Guess what? Us ugly Americans (the ones older than 25 or so) really don't give a flying fuck. Maybe you non-German speaking Europeans would benefit from a nice helping of 20th Century history, since, if the US didn't step in when it did, all of Western Europe would be speaking German, Great Britain included.

Don't insist we have to do something and then balk at the manner in which we do it.

As another ugly American who is over 25 I want to make a few points.

1)  Using our help in WWII as a bat every time a European disagrees with what the US does is very, very, very, very very, VERY lame.  One good deed does not justify any number of wrongs.  That is just shitty logic.

2)  I'm not sold on the idea that Germany could have taken Great Britain.  The brits were having trouble but that island is extremely easy to defend.  I think it would have been a stalemate.  They would not have taken Switzerland either.  Maybe not Finland or Sweden as well.

3)  Nazi economic planning basically consisted of just pumping huge amounts of cash into the economy.  Anyone educated in economics knows that this is a quick fix that is not sustainable when done on the scale that they were doing it on.  Not to mention it is likely someone would have eventually succeeded in killing Hitler and bring down the Nazi regime from within.  I think that the collapse of Nazi Germany was inevitable even if the US had not gotten involved for one reason or another.

4)  I hate US foreign policy.  We've killed a lot of civilians in our recent and early histories.  Yes we've killed some very bad people but it is perfectly valid to say that sometimes we give ourselves enemies when we stick our nose where it does not belong.  WWI was a perfect example of us sticking our nose where it does not belong.  I can understand wanting to stop the Nazis but WWI was basically just a dick waving contest between the European leaders and we did not need to get involved.  George Carlin's bit about how wars just consist of men waving their dicks around is more true than it should be.

5) All that said, Bin Laden was a bad man who absolutely did not give a shit if he killed civilians so I'm glad he's dead even if I don't feel inclined to throw a party about it.  I'm happy we sent men to kill him but I think we could have done that without sticking our nose in Iraq again.  And without drawing out the war in Afghanistan.

6)  I think AQ's ideology is dying out.  Much of the Arab world is moving towards democracy and wants to move out of their medieval age.

1)  Our help in WWII went well beyond the declarations of war.

2)  They could have if Hitler did not switch from bombing the RAF/military sites to the civilians, he had the RAF almost beat which would have lead to air dominance by the Luftwaffe and with that they could win a battle there.  And a major reason the UK was able to stand even that long was massive amounts of supplies from the US and the lend/lease program.

3)  Those happened more as the Nazi's started losing and people didn't want to be dragged down with Hitler meaning a large part was self preservation and not idealogical, while he was winning on all fronts there wasn't much discontent due to most major parties who had those feelings being killed (the SA if you remember was killed in the night of the long knives) or put into concentration camps.

4)  That isolationist view can have some merit but the idea of a Germany so dominant also was not good for US interests and a key ally in the UK was in there so we did have some skin in the game.

5)  I think 90% of the US believes we didn't need to go into Iraq now.

6)  Yup, it will still be influenced by Islam most likely as we are seeing in Egypt but the question is how far does that go and we don't know.  It could mean laws closer to Sharia or a situation like in the US where we have some laws based on Christian dogma.

[Shock G]

basically the issue is that america decided to do a quite open assassination rather than use the law and justice to get things done......I agree that there probably was not a clean way of doing this...but AGAIN if the west wants to be seen as the worlds saviours then we better start acting like it, rather than acting like the biggest and nastiest kid in the playground.......
essentially a bunch of US soldiers murdered a bunch of people and call it justice......not the sort of justice we should be marketing considering the state of things in the world right now

1)  As a combatant he was fair game even if the US just wanted to launch a missile at him, since he formally has declared war on the US and committed multiple acts of war this would hold up rather easily.

2)  And since you agree there was not a clean way of doing this what is your option?  Where is this huge stink you are trying to make if you can not come up with one?  The idea of going into a heavily fortified complex like Bin Laden was in and having to hesitate or an ROE of not firing till fired upon is a joke.  So you can either:

A)  Go in guns blazing since any other option puts your members at risk and taking Bin Laden alive was not the biggest concerned as a combatant.

B)  Use a drone to blow him up, but then you might not have confirmation it was him and just attacked a place deep inside of Pakistan, not a good move strategically since they will be pissed.  While Pakistan can be pissed off at what happened the fact that we caught Bin Laden next to a Pakistani military base puts enough shame on them that they can't make much of a stink.

[N.U.]

Dan Carlin's Tales of the Osterreich is a phenomenal accounting of the Soviet's defense of their homeland. I highly recommend you history buffs to give it a listen. It definitely will change your perception of the Soviet strategy.

FDR's New Deal had been dismantled by the Supreme Cort for being unconstitutional, the US still hadn't pulled clear of the Great Depression, and there was a large Isolationist movement in the US. It would not be surprising to me that Pearl Harbor was a LIHOP (acronym for Let It Happen On Purpose).

Great Britain was being led by Churchill into war, while many from the Houses of Lords and the Royal Family itself (like Edward the VII, who had abdicated a few years earlier) were definitely Nazi sympathizers (why do you think he got shipped off as the Governor of the Bahamas; it kept him and his opinions away from the public at large). Additionally, the Nazi Blitz paired with the unrestricted submarine warfare on civilian cargo transports had the effect of a medieval siege. Facing capitulation by starvation, all the while having the best intelligence network in the world (the United States' OSS* was patterned after British intelligence), Churchill probably worked with FDR to get the US into the war on the UK's side as it would solve both of their problems.

Why else do you think that we committed to the European/African front first even though we were at war with Japan first?

*OSS was the precursor to the CIA