Michael Moore thinks Osama Bin Laden deserved a trial

[Alvin Walton]

Originally Posted by Lotus

I can respect this argument because it recognizes Constitutional provisions rather than completely overlooking them.

But it is a dangerous argument, given that the Constitution protects us from all sorts of possible ugliness.

The Nazis killed many more Americans than bin Laden did. Yet Nazi criminals got trials. Have we become so uncivilized since 1945 that we can no longer live up to our Constitutional ideals of justice by trial?

Its not 1945 anymore.
Things are different and this is a totally different opponent.... a religious fanatical one.
Comparing Bin Laden to the Nazis is ridiculous.
Put him on trial and you give the Islamic media a freaking heyday and you create X amount more martyrs, wannabes, fanatics etc etc.
Its was a not an uncivilzed act, it was an act of common sense.
Bin Laden was an unlawful combatant which means he doesnt qualify for POW status which means he doesnt get a trial.

[SmootSmack]

Al Qaeda members have been and will be tried all around the world, including here. I'm not sure why we keep comparing Bin Laden's singular death to multiple Nazi trials

[Hog1]

I have not read the entire transcripts of the raid, but I think I must ask.
Did OBL make an attempt to surrender that was denied and then summarily executed?

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

Al Qaeda members have been and will be tried all around the world, including here. I'm not sure why we keep comparing Bin Laden's singular death to multiple Nazi trials

I used the Nazis as an example that heinousness of crimes or controversies of trials are not reasons to deny Constitutional justice. Of course you are correct about the singular/multiple thing.

But you highlight an important point: several posts above describe bin Laden's 9/11 act as primarily a military act. For what country's army was he fighting? None. And we had not declared war. Although warfare certainly ensued later, on 9/11/01 bin Laden's act was a crime. So standards of criminal justice apply.

I continue to be aghast at how readily people here (not you Smootsmack) are so willing to make excuses to throw out the US Constitution. It seems we are less civilized than we were in 1945.

[Alvin Walton]

What Bin Laden did was not a crime, it was an act of war....he gets no trial, enemy combatants don't get a trial. (Is there an echo in here?)

I'm amused that someone who should know how many women, children and civilians Bin Laden killed keeps using the word uncivilized when referring to the USA in a Bin laden discussion.

[budw38]

If OSL wanted a trial , he should have turned himself in , he chose to run , hide , give orders to kill Americans all over the world , and when we showed up at his doorstep , he hid behind his women like the coward he ... was . Could care a less about how it ended for him , if we put the next 1,000 Al Queada members on trail or kill them makes no difference to me , they started it , we are going to end it ( hopefully sooner than later ) for the better of all people .

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by Alvin Walton

What Bin Laden did was not a crime, it was an act of war....he gets no trial, enemy combatants don't get a trial. (Is there an echo in here?)

I'm amused that someone who should know how many women, children and civilians Bin Laden killed keeps using the word uncivilized when referring to the USA in a Bin laden discussion.

1) On what basis do you decree that it was an act of war and not a crime? He acted for no country's army. And since when is murder not a crime? And notice that his simple declaration is not enough on this point. If I murder someone today and say that I did it because I am "at war," the cops will lock me up just the same. Tell me why his murderous act was not criminal.

2) In your second paragraph you argue irrationally. Certainly bin Laden was uncivilized - no one here will argue to the contrary. But it is possible that some of us are making an uncivilized argument as well.

Let me put my argument differently: bin Laden wished to destroy the United States. If we then treated him in a way which abrogates our our Constitution, our founding document and the ultimate basis for our law and society, then to a certain extent bin Laden wins. If we denied a trial as specified by our Constitution, then he would have died, but so would our American values and ideals.

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by Lotus

Excellent thoughtful post CRed. I must disagree with your interpretations, though. My understanding of the passage from Amendment 11 which you produced is that it was designed to speak against the idea that the Constitution can be applied in other countries. We can't apply the Constitution in France. But 9/11 was a crime committed in this country so that clause does not apply.

As for bin Laden's assent to governance by the Constitution, things do not work that way. Otherwise any foreigner could come to the USA, break federal law, and claim "You can't try me because I don't assent to your Constitution." Likewise, when I take one of my trips to India, I am subject to Indian law, including the Indian constitution, regardless of my nationality. For bin Laden, his assent was not required since he committed his crime on US soil.

Bin Laden's crime of 9/11 was committed on USA soil. This means that USA law definitely applied, including Constitutional law.

Again, I think you make good arguments Lotus, but I still believe that you are off the mark a bit.

When you take a trip to India, I imagine you get a passport, and enter the country on some sort of visa. When you do the paperwork for those documents you acknowledge the legitimacy of the Indian government. You acknowledge that you will be under their laws. Likewise, when US troops deploy, in a peaceful environment, they abide in those countries under agreements between countries. Bin Laden had no thought of acknowledging the US government's authority, or abiding by our laws, when he planned the attacks on our country and our troops overseas.

You reference the Nazi war trials, but those were not held under US jurisdiction, but world governing bodies. They certainly were not given the due process that our justice would have required. So that argument is slightly off base.

Maybe I have seen a skewed side of the question, because of the fait accompli of Bin Laden's death. If the Seals had in fact captured and brought him here, then yes he would have received a trial or military tribunal, as the bombings of 9/11 certainly were a well planned attack against the presence of the US, and the attack on the Pentagon specifically gave the military a reason to handle the justice under our constitution (the sections I cited earlier referenced them.)

Let me put it this way. A man robs a bank, killing two tellers along the way. He is a US citizen. He will get his day in trial when he is captured. As the police make their way in to arrest him, he pulls a gun, the police shoot, he dies. Did he deserve a trial, no - because he did not give himself over to the authorities, and the authorities used justified force in bringing him in to go before the court. Bin Laden may have gotten the benefits of the US judicial process had he at any point turned himself over but he did not, and was shot. Therefore he doesn't get that judicial process priviledge.

For Michael Moore to say that he deserved a trial implies that he would not have been given one if he had been brought in to the country, but if you make a special military team find you in the middle of the night, you aren't given that benefit of the doubt.

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Again, I think you make good arguments Lotus, but I still believe that you are off the mark a bit.

When you take a trip to India, I imagine you get a passport, and enter the country on some sort of visa. When you do the paperwork for those documents you acknowledge the legitimacy of the Indian government. You acknowledge that you will be under their laws. Likewise, when US troops deploy, in a peaceful environment, they abide in those countries under agreements between countries. Bin Laden had no thought of acknowledging the US government's authority, or abiding by our laws, when he planned the attacks on our country and our troops overseas.

You reference the Nazi war trials, but those were not held under US jurisdiction, but world governing bodies. They certainly were not given the due process that our justice would have required. So that argument is slightly off base.

Maybe I have seen a skewed side of the question, because of the fait accompli of Bin Laden's death. If the Seals had in fact captured and brought him here, then yes he would have received a trial or military tribunal, as the bombings of 9/11 certainly were a well planned attack against the presence of the US, and the attack on the Pentagon specifically gave the military a reason to handle the justice under our constitution (the sections I cited earlier referenced them.)

Let me put it this way. A man robs a bank, killing two tellers along the way. He is a US citizen. He will get his day in trial when he is captured. As the police make their way in to arrest him, he pulls a gun, the police shoot, he dies. Did he deserve a trial, no - because he did not give himself over to the authorities, and the authorities used justified force in bringing him in to go before the court. Bin Laden may have gotten the benefits of the US judicial process had he at any point turned himself over but he did not, and was shot. Therefore he doesn't get that judicial process priviledge.

For Michael Moore to say that he deserved a trial implies that he would not have been given one if he had been brought in to the country, but if you make a special military team find you in the middle of the night, you aren't given that benefit of the doubt.

You and I are mostly in agreement.

As for the part about the Seals, I agree! That's what I've been arguing!

As for the Nuremburg trials, you are correct that they were not under purely US jurisdiction and did not operate by exactly the same standards as US trials. That said, the reason why there were trials at all (rather than just summary executions) was because in most of the Allied countries, justice is defined by a trial, so that model was followed (the Russians just had to bend to the wills of others). So the Nuremburg trials still exhibited the American ideal that there can be no justice without a trial.

As for the India example, if I mastermind an attack on India from my couch here, you can be sure that India will hold me to Indian standards of justice, just as they are currently doing to some Pakistani terrorists who attacked them. The operative principle is that if a crime is committed, the laws of that country are in effect, whether the criminal assents to those laws or not. This is how the international legal system works; this is why we have things like extradition. Put differently, it happens all the time that foreigners commit crimes in the USA, even from abroad in terms of things like email scams, and they are given trials, lawyers, etc., not summarily shot by firing squads or something like that. Our Constitution operates for foreigners, within our borders or not, every day.

As for your bank robbery example, the bank robber still deserves a trial according to the Constitution. But, like bin Laden, he won't get one because he died in the apprehension attempt. And again, just to be clear, I have no problem with the fact that the Seals sent bin Laden to a watery grave.

[Alvin Walton]

Originally Posted by Lotus

1) On what basis do you decree that it was an act of war and not a crime? He acted for no country's army. And since when is murder not a crime? And notice that his simple declaration is not enough on this point. If I murder someone today and say that I did it because I am "at war," the cops will lock me up just the same. Tell me why his murderous act was not criminal.

2) In your second paragraph you argue irrationally. Certainly bin Laden was uncivilized - no one here will argue to the contrary. But it is possible that some of us are making an uncivilized argument as well.

Let me put my argument differently: bin Laden wished to destroy the United States. If we then treated him in a way which abrogates our our Constitution, our founding document and the ultimate basis for our law and society, then to a certain extent bin Laden wins. If we denied a trial as specified by our Constitution, then he would have died, but so would our American values and ideals.

You're splitting hairs.....big time.
I'm done with this thread.
If you want to throw common sense to the wind and coddle guys like Bin Laden go ahead.

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by Alvin Walton

You're splitting hairs.....big time.
I'm done with this thread.
If you want to throw common sense to the wind and coddle guys like Bin Laden go ahead.

I'm not sure how calling murder a crime is "splitting hairs."

I'm not sure how being glad that bin Laden is dead is "coddling" him.

I'm not sure how following the Constitution is throwing "common sense to the wind."

But whatever.

[NC_Skins]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

A trial would have been messy and would have dug up a lot of old wounds,

But "remembering 9/11" every year doesn't dig up old wounds?

Originally Posted by cpayne5

KSM is alive. We captured him in 2003 and he's been sitting in a jail cell ever since.
.

Thanks for the correction. Couldn't remember if he was a capture or kill.

Originally Posted by Alvin Walton

You kill the bad guys. That's how you win.
Did you think he would have come quietly if we asked him?
The US military went to kill Bin Laden beacuse its a WAR.
Its not the FBI rounding up an illegal Cuban kid.

Who deems who the bad guys are? The government? The same people that lie to you on a consistent basis? Also, what war? Only congress can declare war and the last time I checked, they haven't done so.



Listen, I'm all for offing the bad guy when necessary. In fact, I support the death penalty 100% when it can be proved without a shadow of doubt. Such as cases like this (as well as Bin Laden).

Survivor testifies again about Conn. home invasion - Yahoo! News


I have no problem with the Seal team taking him out, as I'm sure he didn't go down without a fight. That said, you don't ignore Constitutional (and International) rights just because you think he doesn't deserve it.

[MTK]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

But "remembering 9/11" every year doesn't dig up old wounds?

Of course it does, but a trial would have been emotional on a different level.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

But "remembering 9/11" every year doesn't dig up old wounds?




Thanks for the correction. Couldn't remember if he was a capture or kill.





Who deems who the bad guys are? The government? The same people that lie to you on a consistent basis? Also, what war? Only congress can declare war and the last time I checked, they haven't done so.



Listen, I'm all for offing the bad guy when necessary. In fact, I support the death penalty 100% when it can be proved without a shadow of doubt. Such as cases like this (as well as Bin Laden).

Survivor testifies again about Conn. home invasion - Yahoo! News


I have no problem with the Seal team taking him out, as I'm sure he didn't go down without a fight. That said, you don't ignore Constitutional (and International) rights just because you think he doesn't deserve it.

When someone has stated that they are the master mind behind killing thousands of Americans he lost any and all Constitutional or International rights. If you don't remember Bin Laden declared war on us so he got waht he asked for. Its not really that hard. He had the chance to surrender but ran until he died.

[SBXVII]

Wait... a trial for a dead man? more waisted American dollars? I hope not. Let his home country handle the ruse of a trial.