A Simple Matter to Drag the People Along

August 6, 2013, 9:00 p.m.

This series includes:"Lavabit Confronts 'Complicit or Close?' Levison Closes," August 9, 2013; "A Simple Matter to Drag People Along," August 6, 2013; "The Future of Surveillance and How to Stop It," August 4, 2013; "Surveillance: Differences of Degree and of Kind," July 3, 2013; "Shooting the Messenger; Should Government Be Able to Keep Its Abuses Secret?," June 11, 2013; "From Zazi to Stasi; Trusting a Government That Doesn't Trust You," June 9, 2013; "Law's Losing Race With Technology," June 7, 2013.

"Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone"
-- Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . [T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

-- Nazi leader (second to Hitler) Herman Goering, April 18, 1946, quoted in Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (1947), confirmed by Snopes.com.

We are in the process of losing one of our most precious rights as Americans; one our nation's founders fought the Revolutionary War to obtain for us: our rights to privacy guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment. See, "The Future of Surveillance, and How to Stop It," August 4, 2013. [Photo credit: Gregory Johnson.]

Make no mistake, it should be obvious that no American, including myself, treats casually the possibility of another 9/11. (Though now 50%, including myself, believe that eliminating every destructive, violent act, regardless of significance, is neither possible nor worth further loss of Americans' privacy rights.) And clearly, I am not saying that there will not be any terrorists' acts during the remainder of this week. How on earth could I know? There may be.

But I find this last weekend's rush to embassy closings throughout the Middle East and Africa very troubling.

1. The timing was suspicious. Having barely avoided passage of a Congressional bill restricting the NSA's domestic surveillance of Americans, only hours later this new, unspecified, terrorist threat -- primarily abroad -- offered the opportunity to brief all of those who had voted for the bill, saying in effect, "See, we told you how well the NSA's surveillance programs work and protect Americans' safety." ("Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.'s data-collection programs." Eric Schmitt, "Qaeda Messages Prompt U.S. Terror Warning," New York Times, August 3, 2013, p. A1. Never mind that this newly found threat abroad, and the surveillance that uncovered it, is totally unrelated to the domestic surveillance that produced the nation's uprising of opposition and the bill for which those legislators had just voted. As the New York Times editorialized today, "No one has questioned the N.S.A.’s role in collecting intelligence overseas, but the debate is about domestic efforts to vacuum up large volumes of data on the phone calls of every American that are legally questionable and needlessly violate Americans’ rights. A threat from Al Qaeda, no matter how serious, should not divert attention from a thorough investigation of the domestic spying."

2. Governments, including ours, are notorious for manipulating their population with fear. Struggling to find a reason for invading Iraq, the Administration came up with a number of scary assertions, all of which proved to be false -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was an ally of al Qaeda who helped plan 9/11, and that he had aluminum tubes for purposes of building atomic weapons. They were following Goering's advice (quoted above) to "tell them [the people] they are being attacked," up to and including, as Condoleeza Rice put it on CNN, September 9, 2002, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Bill Moyers, "Buying the War," Bill Moyers' Journal, April 25, 2007.

3. The supposed threat was so general as to be worthless. "Something is going to happen, somewhere, sometime this week -- maybe as soon as Sunday," we were told. How helpful is it to know that there may be a suicide bomber outside an American embassy somewhere in Africa, or a train derailed in France, or hackers into the power grid causing a blackout throughout the Midwest -- or something else we can't imagine at a place we'd never suspect? What are we supposed to do with that information? Isn't that now true of every day of every week? We've been living with that, and most folks have been going about their business -- with the realization that more pedestrians are killed each year than died in the 9/11 disaster. Aside from scaring people, and gaining support for NSA domestic surveillance, what was the point?

4. Isn't it more likely this was what's called "rabbit chatter"? The intelligence community talks of "chatter," meaning what their surveillance picks up as cell phone conversations or text messages. But the terrorists -- especially their top leaders ["Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, "Qaeda Leader's Edict to Yemen Affiliate Is Said To Prompt Alert," New York Times, August 6, 2013, p. A1.] -- did not need Edward Snowden to tell them this was going on. They are many things, including evil. But they are not dumb. They have work-arounds, including couriers, for carrying on communication among themselves when they don't want to let the NSA in on their plans.

When they do let us listen it's usually deliberate, and designed to mislead us. Indeed, in this instance, concerned that our intelligence might miss their messages, "the Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, posted on jihadist forums on Tuesday [August 30] . . . his address [calling] for attacks on American interests in response to its military actions in the Muslim world and American drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen" -- something we could have found out with a $200 used laptop rather than a multi-hundred-billion-dollar NSA. Eric Schmitt, "Qaeda Messages Prompt U.S. Terror Warning," New York Times, August 3, 2013, p. A1. (Our "military actions," not incidentally, have been an enormous recruiting program for AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), which has seen the number of volunteers increase after every drone strike.)

The intercepted messages were most likely their "rabbit chatter" -- as in, "Oh, look at the cute rabbit!" -- designed to take our eye off of the ball, cause the U.S. government to spread the terror amongst us, and save Al Qaeda the cost of the airline tickets to send their terrorists here -- kind of a win-win from their perspective. We should not be dismissive, or otherwise find their rabbit chatter reassuring. After all, it just means they're planning on carrying out something else while we're busy gearing up for embassy bombings in the Middle East or Africa. But it does mean it's highly unlikely they are going to risk telling us their plans.

5. The media's reaction was frightening. Most newspapers and TV programs fell in line as propagandist cheerleaders, repeating the Administration's line with great solemnity and alarm, without a whisper from reporters -- or the opportunity for guests -- to express either skepticism or even ask serious questions about what our government was doing. It's Iraq all over again. As Bill Moyers observed in 2007 about the media's role in that war, "Four years ago this spring the Bush administration . . . plunged our country into a war . . .. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on. . . . [T]he story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth . . .. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war." Bill Moyers, "Buying the War," Bill Moyers' Journal, April 25, 2007.

6. The government's double standard hypocrisy doesn't build trust. Have you noticed? Our government has leaked that it is monitoring the Al Qaeda leadership, by name (see 4, above), that it includes messages between Pakistan and Yemen, the time it received the messages in question, and their content. So far as I have read, there has been little to nothing written about the possible risk to our national security, and the effectiveness of NSA programs, from these revelations.

Compare this to the reaction to Edward Snowden's revelations. He carefully did not reveal such details; he was concerned about domestic surveillance programs relatively unknown to the public (and, as it's turned out, many senators and members of congress. If I recall correctly, he said little if anything about our foreign surveillance of Al Qaeda operatives.

The former, the government's revelations, may well have caused serious damage to the real efforts to protect us from terrorism. Whether you consider Snowden a hero or a criminal, it's hard to deny that his revelations did not risk that kind of damage.

And yet, those providing the government's revelations are apparently not going to confront even criticism, let alone prosecution. Meanwhile, those in the intelligence community, and their apologists in Congress, while silent about the government's leaks, describe Edward Snowden as a "traitor," engaged in "treason," who ought to be imprisoned for life if not put to death.

What is the consistent theme here?

It seems to me it relates to the impact on the Administration's, and intelligence community's, public relations. Revelations that embarrass the government will be considered "treason" (for example, that the government has withheld from the American people the extent to which it is spying on them). Those that demonstrate how wonderful our surveillance programs are working to protect us from terrorism (deceptively suggesting the unrelated domestic surveillance programs are equally valuable) will be considered "patriotism."

7. More bizarre, inexplicable inconsistency further challenges government's credibility. If there really is a potential danger to all U.S. embassies in the Middle East and Africa, warranting their closing and protection of their employees -- a matter as to which I don't express an opinion -- why, oh why, would our embassies in the two countries where we are at a stage of "war" be exempt??!! "The United States is to keep some of its embassies in North Africa and the Middle East closed until the end of the week as a precaution due to a possible al-Qaeda terror threat. Yesterday [Aug. 4] 21 diplomatic posts were shut . . .. However US embassies in Kabul, Baghdad and Algiers will reopen today [Aug. 5]." "Terror Threat Keeps Some U.S. Embassies Closed Until Saturday," Euronews, August 5, 2013.

8. "Do unto others . . .." Imagine for a moment that the roles were reversed. Imagine that Canada was letting Al Qaeda have bases for drones -- or unable to prevent them. Imagine that Al Qaeda was targeting our leaders -- pick your favorites: Senators and members of Congress, the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, football coaches, hedge fund managers, whoever you feel closest to. Imagine that, in the process, they ended up killing, probably unintentionally, members of your family, or your church, or your football team. Can you understand why what we are doing in Yemen -- as I write this -- is increasing, much faster than it is decreasing, the number of Yemenis who join AQAP, but the far greater numbers who simply seek revenge against us?

As I write this, I am sitting in the room where I lay on the floor, my head in the radio speaker, December 7, 1941, listening to the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, while my father brought me the globe, spun it, and pointed out Hawaii -- perhaps in an effort to reassure me it was farther away than Cedar Rapids. We may be better off these days, in a way, not accepting on blind faith everything our government tells us. But there were advantages to the government motivating us with a spirit of patriotism, rather than with a fear of terrorism. We came together as a nation then, fought and won a world war in less than half the time it will take us to become, and remain, bogged down in Afghanistan. There was a role for everyone in WWII, including seven-year-old boys; there was no political capital to be gained by a senator declaring his party's primary political goal was to make the president fail; then, that would have been regarded as treason.

I wish I could feel the sense of trust in my government this evening that I felt 70 years ago, but I just can't.

# # #

Thinking About War -- Before Starting One

March 20, 2013, 8:00 a.m.

Iraq: What Were We Thinking? We Weren't Thinking
This week marks the tenth anniversary of our ill-considered, ill-fated, unprovoked, unproductive, super-deadly, super-expensive, preemptive war of choice in Iraq.

Remember the lines from the Viet Nam War song, "War. What's it good for? Absolutely nothing"? (If not, click the link and read them.)

Unfortunately, the Iraq War was "good for" considerably more than "absolutely nothing." In addition to the hostility we created among Iraqis and throughout the Muslim world, thereby accelerating the recruitment efforts of al Qaeda, the destabilization of the Middle East, the tens of thousands of dead and disabled men, women and children, disrupted families and businesses, orphaned children, billions of property damage, and destruction of centuries old cultural artifacts from this "cradle of civilization," there is also the addition of some $2 trillion to our nation's mounting gift of debt to our grandchildren (after we've properly paid our wounded and surviving veterans for the rest of their lives). [Photo credit: multiple sources.]

Among all the regrets over which we should be grieving this week of remembrance, is that all of these consequences not only could have been predicted, they were predicted.

Although as Maritime Administrator I played some role with regard to sealift to Viet Nam, I claim no expertise in matters of war strategy. I have never been a member of the Staff to the Joints Chiefs of Staff, a member of the faculty of any of our war colleges, nor an author of any of "The Pentagon Papers."

My point is not that my early insights are evidence of my brilliance. Indeed, quite the opposite. My point, my question, is if these questions were so obvious to me, with no expertise in the strategy of war, or responsibility for launching an Iraq War of choice, why were they not even more obvious to those who had that expertise and responsibility? And if there were those within government who shared these concerns, as I assume there must have been, why were they rebuffed or overruled by their superiors?

Anyhow, here on this tenth anniversary, as we mourn their decision, is a republication of a column I wrote ten years ago:

Ten Questions for Bush Before War
Nicholas Johnson
The Daily Iowan, Guest Opinion
February 4, 2003, p. A6
As a university community we don’t just “support” or “oppose” the war in Iraq. We value data and reasoned analysis. We ask questions.

Put aside the nukes in North Korea. Put aside the emotionally charged arguments. Not that they’re irrelevant. But just consider these 10 questions you might want to ask your public officials, academic colleagues, any presidential candidates you happen upon – and yourself.

1. Al Qaeda is alive and well, just over the Afghanistan border and in 60 countries. Why start a new war before resolving the last? How is "homeland security" improved by diverting focus from Al Qaeda?

2. Global Muslim support is essential to a successful war on terrorism. Threatening war with Iraq increases Muslims’ hatred – and terrorists’ recruiting. What benefits from war in Iraq exceed the costs of increased terrorism here?

3. Iraq war or not, our arrogant, go-it-alone saber-rattling has squandered valuable post-9/11 global good will. Our worldwide economic, democratic, military and human rights efforts require allies. How does alienating them serve our national interest?

4. President Bush says Saddam might use weapons of mass destruction. The President may be wrong; but especially if he's right, why fail to heed the CIA's warning: Saddam's most likely to do so only if attacked?

5. The administration’s inherited budget surpluses have become deep deficits. War with Iraq adds billions to our grandchildren’s national debt. Why abandon our relatively low-cost policy of containment? Why now? And, if so, why not increase taxes to pay as we go?

6. The Administration’s policy of global military domination and preemptive wars reverses 200 years of American policy, violates international law, the UN Charter, NATO Treaty, and possibly the U.S. Constitution. China could use the theory to justify attacking Taiwan. How is national security improved by setting back 50 years of progress in international relations?

7. Once the dogs of war are unleashed, there’s no controlling where they go. If we let the dogs out, minimally we lose Middle East stability. Worst case, we start World War III. How does risking either serve our interests?

8. What’s “war” in a city? We can level Baghdad, as we did Dresden and Hiroshima. That’s lots of “collateral damage.” We can send in ground troops. But even a weakened Hitler was able to kill the 10,000 Russian soldiers who tried that strategy in Berlin. What military strategy makes a Baghdad war “winnable” – with acceptable levels of civilian and U.S. casualties?

9. Assume the improbable: a war that’s quick, cheap, decisive and contained. What then? Why will Saddam’s successor be better? How can he prevent civil war among Iraq’s factions, let alone Middle East chaos? Our man in Afghanistan is still under attack even in Kabul. Why will our man in Baghdad do better? What will it cost us to rebuild Iraq? Will we keep bases there forever? Or will we abandon Iraq for wars elsewhere – as we’ve done in Afghanistan?

10. Iraq sits atop the world’s second largest oil reserves. How much of this proposed war is about oil? How will U.S. occupation of Iraq affect the interests of U.S. oil companies -- and consumers? Which campaign contributors profit from this war?

Washington hasn’t, yet, provided satisfactory (to me) answers to these and other questions. Maybe we can find them in Iowa City.

As it happens, the lessons from this disaster go far beyond governmental decisions about war, and the consequences for Defense Department appropriations and their impact on our national debt.

"What were you thinking?" we sometimes wonder about (or ask) teenagers. Occasionally, we're even wise enough to put that question to ourselves. And the most honest response is often, as with our War in Iraq, "We weren't thinking."

Although the questions are different, decisions regarding our choice of career, college, spouse or partner, apartment or house, automobile, entrepreneurial business, exercise regime, hobbies and volunteer activity, and more, are also subject to a similar kind of rational, analytical thinking our government should have used before going to war in Iraq -- even if the consequences for getting it wrong are far greater from war than from our personal failures to think before acting.

The Small Business Administration reports that a full 50% of all new businesses fail sometime within five years. At least one of the reasons why, perhaps the most important reason, is the failure to take seriously the necessity of a "business plan" and the thinking that goes into it -- including the failure to use what the Small Business Administration makes available for free to all budding entrepreneurs as the step-by-step instructions for creating such a plan.

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For my additional pre-war thinking in columns throughout 2002, see

Nicholas Johnson, "Search for Better Response Than War; Don't Reward the Terrorists, but Understand Their Interests," Des Moines Sunday Register Opinion/Iowa View, June 30, 2002, p. OP3;

Nicholas Johnson, "Let's not get between Iraq and a hard place," Omaha World-Herald, August 13, 2002 (and as published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen and as submitted to both);

Nicholas Johnson, "On Iraq, Tell the Rest of the Story," Iowa City Gazette, October 2, 2002, p. A4;

Nicholas Johnson, "Capitalists Can Help U.S. Avert War with Iraq," Iowa City Press-Citizen, Sunday Insight, October 6, 2002, p. A11;

and the March 2002 lecture, Nicholas Johnson, "Rethinking Terrorism," National Lawyers Guild Conference, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, March 2, 2002.

# # #

Justice Was Done

May 9, 2011, 4:45 p.m.
And see, "Bin Laden Killed -- Significance? The Two-Trilion-Dollar Assassination" May 1, 2011; and the additional points made in Gregory Johnson, "The Impact and Consequences of Osama Bin Laden's Assassination," May 1, 6, 7, 10, 2011.

Examining Heads

Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that [Osama Bin Laden] the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.

-- President Barack Obama, CBS "60 Minutes," May 8, 2011

Bin Laden is dead. Many Americans seem to believe that the only appropriate thing to say on such an occasion is "USA! USA!" or "We're Number One!" They may even be right about that. At a minimum, for anyone to sit back and reflect on what we did and how and why we did it risks an accusation of "un-American" at best. That makes this blog entry one of the most difficult to write.

No matter how precisely it is conditioned and qualified, given the emotional subject matter the odds are good that at least some readers will come away with the impression that I (a) do not fully and appropriately appreciate the accomplishment of the Navy SEALS who killed Ben Ladin, (b) the daring and skill of President Obama and his advisers, or, worst of all, (c) am somewhat ambivalent about the desirability of eliminating Bin Laden.

All those assertions would be false.

Clearly, the world -- not just the United States -- is better off without Bin Laden; and the intelligence gathering, planning, training, and professional execution of those plans by the Obama Team and Navy SEALS qualifies as one of America's greatest intelligence and special operations accomplishments ever.

OK?

Moreover, there are no claims here of either expertise, or the knowledge supported by research, regarding international law or criminal law. These are just some random thoughts about the events of a week ago.

1. Justice. What does the President mean by "Justice was done"? "Bringing someone to justice," or saying "He got justice," carries at least two possible meanings. (a) It can mean "revenge," or "retribution" -- "an eye for an eye." This was the meaning in America's "lawless" wild west -- where the advice to "shoot first, ask questions later" enabled anyone carrying a gun to play all the parts: legislature, complainant, investigator, arresting officer, county attorney, grand jury, judge, jury, warden and executioner, and to play all of them within a fraction of a second. It was what enabled the KKK to carry out lynchings without the bother of troublesome "legal technicalities." It's the mafia's approach to settling scores, the urban gangs' protection of their territory, and the cause of the tens of thousands of dead Mexicans who got in the way of the drug cartels.

(b) But bringing someone to justice can also mean that someone believed to be guilty is put through the judicial system, and process -- and provided its protections -- before they are killed or otherwise punished. Some of those involved in terrorist plots in the U.S., including that on 9/11, have been "brought to justice" in this sense. Clearly, had Bin Laden, like the others, been brought to justice in this sense, and a judge and jury concluded that Bin Laden was in fact, as Obama asserted, the "perpetrator of mass murder on American soil," the President could then accurately assert (if one accepts that a jury verdict is the definition of "legal truth") that Bin Laden did "deserve what he got." (Although, even then, were he given the death penalty, he would probably have died by lethal injection under medical supervision rather than a shot to the head in a bedroom in the middle of the night.)

Thus, we must conclude that our President was using the word "justice" in the American wild west sense.

2. Killing in Context. Not all killing is "murder." A reasonable apprehension that one is under attack and at risk of being killed may turn the killing of the attacker from "murder" into "self defense." Reckless, though sober, driving at excessive speed, with absolutely no intention of killing anyone, may turn a pedestrian's death from "murder" into "manslaughter." The insanity of the defendant may protect him. And, of course, the debate continues in state legislatures and elsewhere regarding the circumstances under which "assisted suicide," or the aborting of a fetus, should be punished as murder.

3. Examining Heads. President Obama says, "anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."

(a) As mentioned above, such a statement totally ignores with a verbal leapfrog the matter of process. Of anyone found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of "mass murder" it can fairly be said that he did "deserve what he got," up to and including the death penalty. However, under our legal system of "justice" we make a distinction between a before-trial assertion and a post-conviction verdict.

(b) To say of someone that he "needs to have their head examined" is to close off any possibility of civil and rational discussion and exploration of issues.

This runs totally counter to what the President asserts is his approach to the exploration of issues and decision making:

[O]ne of the things that we've done here is to build a team . . . where everybody speaks their mind. . . . [W]hat I've tried to do is make sure that every time I sit down in the situation room, every one of my advisors around there knows I expect them to give me their best assessments.

And so the fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information.

(c) The fact is that not everyone agrees regarding the virtue of wild west assassinations. Of the 193 countries in the United Nations, 49% have abolished the death penalty. "Use of Capital Punishment by Nation," wikipedia.org. Sixteen U.S. states have banned the death penalty. Many of the world's great religions look askance at killing. When the U.S. military did its "recruiting" with a mandatory draft, even the military recognized the rights of "conscientious objectors" to refuse to serve in positions potentially requiring killing in war.

(d) Among those "some who voiced doubts about this approach" among the President's advisers, we cannot know the nature of their objections. But it does seem to me not totally unreasonable for someone to hold the view that we would have better served our national security by capturing and interrogating Bin Laden than by assassinating him.

For these and other reasons it does seem to me a bit out of line for the President to suggest that all who disagree with him do so as a result of mental deficiency or psychiatric disability.

4. War and Other International Law. Of course, a major exception to the prohibition of murder is "war." (a) For example, suppose it was the Pakistan Army rather than the Taliban that was running things in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden was the commanding general in charge inside the Pakistan Army Afghanistan headquarters, and, at the request of the Afghanistan government, the U.S. Congress had passed a declaration of war against Pakistan that included driving them out of Afghanistan (which they had invaded; as with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War). Under these circumstances, I believe that killing Bin Laden -- whether by bombing the headquarters where he was, or by making it a special ops mission -- would be justified under the rules of war and not considered murder.

But an analysis of the rationale for Bin Laden's assassination a week ago is not this clear cut.

Whatever it is we are doing, it is not a nation vs. nation war in the old World War II, or Gulf War I, sense. The U.S. military are the only combatants wearing uniforms. We are not fighting a nation, we are fighting an "ism" -- terrorism, "the war on terrorism."

It is apparently our theory that it is a "war," subject to the rules of war, because we say it is a war, rather than, say, an international police crime-fighting effort.

Because this is not a war against any one nation, does this mean that we can, in the name of "war," enter any and all nations, without their invitation or permission, whenever we want to so long as we can offer a credible claim that there are "terrorists" in that country? Apparently so. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq as "wars of choice," fly drones over Yemen (also on assassination missions) -- and now Pakistan.

President Obama acknowledged as much:

Obviously, we're going into the sovereign territory of another country [Pakistan] and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it's a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who's in this compound, and, you know, we've spent Special Forces in -- we've got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision.

Insofar as we were "conducting a military operation" in "the sovereign territory of another country," doesn't that raise the same issues whether it turns out to be Bin Laden or that Dubai prince?

The facts regarding the potential capture, but ultimate assassination, of Bin Laden remain unclear, at least to me. However, my understanding of international law (which may be wrong), is that those facts make a difference: If this were a conventional war, and our enemy wore uniforms, and we were in a position to kill one of them, but it was clear that they were off-guard, unarmed and wished to surrender, it is then not OK to assassinate them. Indeed, there have been instances in which American military have killed either enemy combatants, or what seem to have been innocent civilians, in such situations and been court martialed for doing so.

No, to be clear, I am in no way suggesting our brave SEALS should be court martialed. Of course not. It may very well be that, regardless of the circumstances, it was appropriate and legal to kill him. But it does seem to me the distinctions are worth noting and reflecting upon anyway.

This was not shooting at someone in a uniform, who was shooting at us, on a battlefield in a country to which we had been invited to conduct military operations. This was entering the territory of a sovereign nation with a military operation, not only without invitation or permission, but with advance notice of repeated objections to our conducting military operations there. Although located in a town with Pakistani military installations, the home in which Bin Laden was shot was in a suburban residential neighborhood. It was the middle of the night, in a private home with some 20 residents, in the bedroom where he was with his wife. Best as I can tell from newspaper reports, although he was "resisting" (after all, who wouldn't), he was unarmed and represented no physical danger to the SEALS.

Not incidentally, not only was there some question as to whether this operation was going to work, there was some question as to whether the man they found there was, in fact, Bin Laden.

President Obama:

This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence that we had was not absolutely conclusive. This was circumstantial evidence that he was gonna be there. . . . But we didn't have a photograph of bin Laden in that building. There was no direct evidence of his presence. . . . And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I mean there're a lot of moving parts here. . . . as outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did -- and I cannot praise them enough they did an extraordinary job with just the slenderest of bits of information to piece this all together -- at the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation. I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences. . . .

KROFT: When did you start to feel comfortable that bin Laden had been killed?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: When they landed [presumably this is a reference to landing back in Afghanistan] we had very strong confirmation at that point that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that in fact it was him. We hadn't yet done DNA testing, but at that point we were 95 percent sure. . . .

5. Concluding Comments.

The entire "60 Minutes" interview is available in video, below, followed by textual excerpts that I found relevant to the discussion above.

As this blog entry began, "Clearly, the world -- not just the United States -- is better off without Bin Laden; and the intelligence gathering, planning, training, and professional execution of those plans by the Obama Team and Navy SEALS qualifies as one of America's greatest intelligence and special operations accomplishments ever."

I'm as pleased as anyone that Bin Laden is no longer walking the earth. I do not think that anyone needs be prosecuted for war crimes. But the President is invoking "who we are":

But we don't need to spike the football. . . . [W]e don't trot out this stuff [photos of Bin Laden's wounds] as trophies. . . . [T]hat's not who we are. . . .

We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body . . . consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body. . . . [T]hat, again, is somethin' that makes us different.

And so I ask, "who are we?" Because the answer to that question, our occupation of the world's moral high ground, is going to involve a little more than the sophistication of a Grade B Hollywood western in which we all cheer when the white hats kill off the black hats in the final scene.
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"Obama on Bin Laden: The Full '60 Minutes' Interview," CBS, May 8, 2011 -- the video, followed by relevant textual excerpts:

This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence that we had was not absolutely conclusive. This was circumstantial evidence that he was gonna be there. . . . But we didn't have a photograph of bin Laden in that building. There was no direct evidence of his presence. . . . And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I mean there're a lot of moving parts here. . . . as outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did -- and I cannot praise them enough they did an extraordinary job with just the slenderest of bits of information to piece this all together -- at the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation. I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences.

Obviously, we're going into the sovereign territory of another country and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it's a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who's in this compound, and, you know, we've spent Special Forces in -- we've got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision. . . .

[O]ne of the things that we've done here is to build a team that is collegial and where everybody speaks their mind. And there's not a lot of snipin' or back-biting after the fact. And what I've tried to do is make sure that every time I sit down in the situation room, every one of my advisors around there knows I expect them to give me their best assessments.

And so the fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information. . . . [T]here were sufficient risks involved where it wasn't as if any of the folks who were voicing doubts were voicing somethin' that I wasn't already runnin' through in my own head. You know, we understood that there were some significant risks involved in this. . . .

KROFT: When did you start to feel comfortable that bin Laden had been killed?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: When they landed we had very strong confirmation at that point that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that in fact it was him. We hadn't yet done DNA testing, but at that point we were 95 percent sure. . . .

KROFT: Why haven't you released them [photos of Bin Laden]?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: . . . It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool.

You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. . . .

KROFT: Was it your decision to bury him at sea?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was a joint decision. We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body if he were killed in the compound. And I think that what we tried to do was, consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body.

Frankly we took more care on this than, obviously, bin Laden took when he killed 3,000 people. He didn't have much regard for how they were treated and desecrated. But that, again, is somethin' that makes us different. And I think we handled it appropriately.

Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.

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