Slashdot Mirror
Bin Laden Hideout Recreated In Counter-Strike
dotarray writes "Osama bin Laden's final hiding spot in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has been made into a playable map for Counter-Strike: Source. Honestly, we're a little surprised that it took this long."
I agree, I mean taking credit for 3,000+ deaths in one swoop who were also unarmed should give him the right to a fair trial
A few considerations:
First, if in fact somebody is particularly, notoriously, heinous, surely they won't exactly be looking forward to a fair trial? All those cases where the 'obvious' guilt of the suspect offends the public should be cakewalks for the prosecution, given the value of rule of law, is the short procedural delay really a big deal?
Second, there are situations(almost certainly not his; but that isn't the point) where the public/media are incorrect. That's sort of the reason that rule of law is considered superior to lynch mobs.
The third is more pragmatic: Against certain classes of opponent(internationally notorious mediagenic terrorist figureheads definitely being among them) fair trials are among the most powerful things you can do to them, the more boring, the better. You don't want the last few pages of their upcoming hagiography to be something out of an action thriller: 'went down in hail of bullets during a shootout with sinister international assassin squad, a true martyr of the movement'. You want it to be as unbelievably dull as possible. 'Taken into custody, charged with X,Y,Z, went before FOO district court, convicted, sentenced, just like any common criminal.' Obviously, getting shot kind of ruins your day; but it buffs the hell out of your legacy. Only cool people get assassinated. They more shadowy and badass the assassins, the better. Getting tried and convicted like any common scumbag, though, especially if the authorities stubbornly treat you neither better nor worse than anybody else being processed through the system, is basically the most banal exit possible.
Honestly, I think that international relations would be a much nicer game if the bulk of the casualties were among the upper echelons of political and military power, on all sides, rather than concentrated among a mixture of civilians and common soldiers who are allocated the overwhelming majority of the killing and the dying.
He had two guns: a pistol and an AK. They were just out of reach in the room. The only good having the guns to hand would have done him is to die with the gun in his hand and maybe taking an American with him on the way out. He'd have died anyway. When they kicked in the door he was asleep and surprised - which is the freaking point of using a Navy SEAL team and top-secret stealth helicopters deep in foreign territory. He declared himself a combatant in war on the US, and acted on that. He was "under arms."
You're offended they didn't fight fair. Well boo freaking hoo. The goal is not to fight fair. It's not to die for your country. The goal is to secure the objective. It's to make the other poor bastard die for his. How this went down was right and proper. The SEAL team doesn't have to let the bad guy pop some rounds off to make you feel better about this.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm one of those foreigners who're a little worried about what USA will do next in the name of "justice".
Wikileaks has exposed corruption in my own government, is perfectly legal, and is basically doing the job our newspaper journalists should do, so I want to support them. But according to the logic of many Americans, anyone who indirectly helps their enemies is also an enemy. If I donate money to Wikileaks, will I also be put on the list for "supporting terrorists"? Will the US government try to seize my foreign assets and arrest me if I put my foot on US soil?
The truth is that the only function of a trial is to ascertain guilt or innocence. The punishment is the part that brings about justice, and when there can be no doubt of guilt, there is no particular need for a trial.
There are a number of reasons there should always be a trial:
1. People are "certain" of someone's guilt and turn out to be wrong all the time.
Osama Bin Laden is actually a good example of this. Everybody's assuming he's behind the 9/11 bombings, but there wasn't enough evidence for FBI to put out an arrest warrant. Until his death, Obama was formally only wanted for the bombings against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. (FBI Most Wanted)
The video released shortly after the 9/11 bombings, where he allegedly took the blame for the attacks, was badly translated. Osama certainly seemd to applaud the bombings after the fact, but it's not clear what part, if any, he took in actutally perpetrating them.
The Guantanamo prisoners are another example. American politicians assured us they were "the worst of the worst", and now it turns out some of them weren't even held because they were suspected of terrorism; they were held only because the US military wanted information from them.
2. Allowing assassinations without trial provides the people in power with a convenient way to do away with their political enemies, as long as they can whip up a public frenzy against them. This can and will be abused.
3. A trial lets all the facts on the table.
... plus everything else which has been going on behind the scenes and we don't know about yet.
Perhaps Osama is guilty, but not of what he is accused of. Perhaps there are more guilty parties, but the people in power wants some of them to go free. Executing someone without trial is a convenient way to punish your guilty enemy, while letting your guilty friends get away.
In this particular case, embarassing facts that may surface during a trial include
a) Incompetence on the part of Homeland Security
b) Facts regarding the close ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family
c) The US government's previous support to the terrorists they are now fighting
4. Legality. If we start making exceptions to the law when someone is "obviously guilty", people will start abusing it for their own ends, or simply do it out of laziness, and point to the previous cases as justification. The only way to avoid this is to err on the side of caution and always follow the law, even when someone IS obviously guilty.
you should not compare the life of the soldier to the life of bin Laden but to the lives which could have been saved by interrogating him.