Justice?
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Justice: “the administration of law according to prescribed and accepted principles.”
In his speech to the nation following the raid and subsequent killing of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama was – perhaps for the first time in his presidency – seriously injudicious with his words.
His mistake? In referring to the death of bin Laden at the hands of a Seal Commando team, several times Obama used the word: “Justice.”
Was it relief after a tense situation? Was it elation that the mission had not blown up in his face, caused an international incident and possibly doomed his chances for re-election? Who knows. Whatever it was, it was an uncharacteristic mistake by a man who is usually very careful with his choice of words.
As Commander in Chief, the President is well within his rights to take any action he feels necessary to protect the citizens of his country from any real and present dangers to America and its citizens. This includes authorizing troops to use lethal force. Killing your enemy in battle, even a one sided surprise commando raid, may be considered necessary. But it is a huge mistake to consider such killing as “justice.”
Thinking of any military action as right and just sets a very dangerous precedent. In its own way, Obama’s calling the killing of bin Laden justice could ultimately be just as dangerous and inflammatory as his predecessor’s injudicious use of the word “crusade” to describe our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If the Muslim world – and the rest of the world – perceives Obama as one who excuses all military actions as “just,” and even righteous, what is to keep him from sending helicopters full of soldiers into other countries and executing their citizens?
My favorite definition of the word justice is: “the administration of law according to prescribed and accepted principles.” As a Constitutional law scholar the President should know better than to wave around the “J” word when talking about military or para-military operations. Wars are messy. There is always collateral damage. Innocents get killed in the cross fire. Because of this, wars are, by definition, never about justice. You don’t send in a highly trained group of professional killers to mete out justice. No matter how bad a guy bin Laden was, storming into his house, shooting him twice in the head and dumping his body in the ocean cannot be thought of as the administration or even the enforcement of law.
Revenge? Maybe. Retribution? Certainly. But justice? I don’t think so.
When you can’t bring the accused back to face charges because of the outcry it would cause and the possible embarrassing things that might come out of a trial; when the results of your military action is so gruesome you can’t even release pictures of the accused man’s corpse for fear that it will inflame riots; when every aspect of said operation is secret and confidential, it may be the most expedient way to remove a threat to your country.
But it’s not justice.
I’m aware of the challenges of trying to neutralize a crazed religious zealot bent on martyrdom. It may well be that shooting bin Laden and making his body disappear was the only way to prevent his death from becoming a focal point for those bent on terrorism against the United States. No shrine, no body, no martyr. And, as I’ve said before, if one defines one’s actions as a “war on terror,” then taking out the enemy is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
But you can’t call it justice.
In a perverse way, if we truly wanted to visit justice on Osama bin Laden, if we really wanted the punishment to fit the crime, we should try him, convict him, then pack a 747 full of jet fuel and fly it into his house. Better still, we should systematically identify all members of his family and fly planes into their houses.
I am sufficiently convinced that the President exerted due diligence before making the decision to send in the SEAL team. Unlike his predecessor, he pondered long and hard over the ramifications, weighed the pros and cons and ultimately decided that a commando strike was the best course to take. I don’t fault him for making the decision to go ahead. I do wish, however, that he’d been a little more careful in his choice of language.
There are enough people in the military who think surgical pre-emptive para-military strikes are righteous and just should be a regular part of our foreign policy. I don’t think they need any encouragement from the commander-in-chief.
