If the Law is against you, argue morality. If morality is against you, argue the Law.

One can imagine Alan Austins sour face now that he knows that the hated USA has killed his hero. Naturally, he has to dream up something, anything, to try and get some mileage out of.

Alan has chosen to appear the impartial referee, sagely pointing out that killing bin Laden was utterly wrong, because killing peopkle is wrong, it is not justice, blah, blah, blah.

His opinion might make some sense if Afghanistan was a normal country whose police force would have arrested bin Laden and his cronies, and then extradited them to the USA for justice. But Al Qaida is a private army, who's existence was sanctioned by what laughingly passed for a "government" in that blighted multicultural country. The only way that anyone was going to get bin Laden was by military force.

Terrorists are not criminals. Criminals are primarily concerned with self interest. Criminals do not blow themselves up in aeroplanes just to mass murder their fellow passengers to make a religious point. And terorists are not soldiers. They are not representative of any recognised state, they are private armies who wear no internationally recognised uniform, and they have as much right to go to war against the West, as the Ku Klux Klan has to go to war with France.

I am very ahppy that bin Laden is dead, and I hope that the yanks bury him in a pigskin

Hate to break it to you, LEGO, but bin Laden is a Saudi millionaire who has been living sumptuously in a mansion in Pakistan, as the US has known for ages. So, um, Afghanistan?
And ‘terrorists are not criminals’? Try telling that to the victims of the Bali bombings or 9/11.
Excellent article, thank you, Alan. I just hope you are wrong about this barbarous murder by US thugs leading to more senseless killings.

I don’t think either are correct, Obama with (Justice has been done) or Alan Austin with (the murder of Bin Laden). This was just good old retribution and I don’t have a problem with that.

When an angry son of a wealthy Saudi family goes feral and stirs up hatred and inspires atrocities against all creeds, and all nations, the inevitability of retribution is not far away.

It is instructive that against the backdrop of the rising up of peoples against oppression, those who look really out of touch are now squealing; they are the human rights activists.

As our attention is drawn to those really oppressed and largely ignored by human rights activists, we can compare the perceived oppression by the west in general and the USA in particular, with the real oppression.

Osama Bin Laden has done more to damage Islamic Fundamentalism than any other individual. It is now exposed for what it is, Islamic-fascism. We in the west now understand just how sectarian, fractured and conflicting Islam really is. We understand just how the latest breed of totalitarian oppressors has high jacked their religious passion.

More importantly, we now have the comparative understanding that the most dangerous amongst us are those who, under the cover of human rights, support those who threaten our societies from within.

Sorry for your loss Alan, but where have you been for the last 40 years?

“Ending this evil of government-sanctioned murder must require all nations, including the USA, to desist.”

Had only one nation the capability to be really democratic would be a start!

The people of Australia could be the first.

Or is mine the only forlorn hope of a skeptic?

Osama Bin Laden when surrounded by USA armed men was given the opportunity to surrender and be brought to trial same as Saddam Husein; which would have been preferable. He chose to stand and fight as a martyr so there were no options but to shoot.

@ spindoc, you write: "I don’t think either are correct, Obama with (Justice has been done) or Alan Austin with (the murder of Bin Laden). This was just good old retribution and I don’t have a problem with that."
Are you serious or just teasing? Do you really believe it is okay for an armed squad to enter another country and assassinate people they believe are guilty of past atrocities?
Surely this is the moral philosophy which underlay the attacks by Al Qaeda on American military targets ten years ago.
Don't you think we in the West these days should value the rule of law and fair trial above retribution?