Squashed: Justice and Assassination
Abby Jean writes:
I am really hoping that we can get into a broad conversation about what constitutes “justice” and whether killing OBL constitutes justice (for who? for what?) and if not why not
(this is a genuine non-sarcastic desire)
Since I share Abby Jean’s desire, I’ll take a first crack at the question. As I see it, there are three related questions.
- Did justice demand Osama Bin Laden’s death?
- If justice demands retribution, is the United States the correct agent to deliver that justice?
- Were just procedures employed in the killing of Osama Bin Laden?
I answer these questions, respectively, as maybe, no, and possibly and conclude that the killing of Osama Bin Laden was not justice.
The first question is a broad philosophical question that we’re not likely to get a real answer on. Is justice ever retributive? If anybody deserved to die for his crimes, Osama Bin Laden did. But the conception of justice I find most helpful (which is fundamentally a religious conception) is not retributive. Justice requires us to fulfill our obligations to others. It does not require us to harm those who do not fulfill their obligations to us. Do I think Bin Laden deserved to die? Probably. But (again, I’m a religious guy), if the wages of sin are death, we can’t go around demanding the death of everybody who deserves death for one infraction or another.
The second question is more practical. If some cosmic balance requires the death of evildoers, does it require (or permit) the United States to go around killing those evildoers? I don’t think it does. Why would it? We’re not a theocracy. We don’t claim a divine mandate. Our leaders are not annointed with oil and asked to serve as the right hand of God. We might kill people for less lofty reasons. But if justice demands death, it doesn’t give us a license to go around killing.
The answer to the final question hinges on what the purpose of the mission that killed Bin Laden was. We don’t want our government going around and killing people. Bin Laden never got a trial. Of course, under the circumstances, that wasn’t practical. Was the goal simply to kill Bin Laden? Or was the goal to capture him if possible, even if we knew that probably meant his death. If Bin Laden had surrendered, would he still have been killed? If so, then I see an error of procedural justice. If not, then I don’t have procedural problems with the mission.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that an action may be moral or just without being directly required by justice. If killing Bin Laden prevented greater harms, it may be just even if it did not, in itself, directly promote justice.
I’d like to hear from a few others on this topic, particularlyly AZSpot and Ari Kohen. (Edit: Ari is already on the topic.)
Yes, but considering the U.S. isn’t a theocracy, if the U.S. government had a written-down, go-to definition of ‘justice’ somewhere, it would (probably) not be defined in your terms of some ‘cosmic balance’, or religious conception, and therefore the U.S. Government would (probably) not see ‘justice‘ as something only a God or his right hand may carry out. Arguing that the U.S. doesn’t have a requirement (or permission) to carry out ‘Justice’ based on a definition of justice that the United States government (probably) doesn’t subscribe to is absurd.
