Osama Bin Laden

This one is a serious post.

So OBL is dead and the general view in our press is that this was a good thing. We have, however, stepped over a mark as society.

The facts seem to be agreed,-

• The Americans went in to Pakistan to specifically assinate OBL
• They did not telll the Pakistani authorities
• OBL was unarmed
• OBL was shot in the head

All this might seem justified to rid the world of a "bad guy" who admitted master-minding the killing of thousands of people, however, it also sets a very dangerous moral precedent insofaras,-

• A foreign power carried out a military operation in another country without permission
• The operation was an execution
• There was no trial
• There was no UN resolution sanctioning an execution or assassination
• The ends are seen to justify the means

How long before some despot, dictator, lunatic ruler/regime decide to copy the Americans? After the "war on terror" being used  by Bush as an excuse to invade Afghanistan etc we saw Putin use the same reason for attacking his own people. More recently we heard Gadaffi suggest that he was fighting Al Qaeda whilst killing his own people.

Perhaps we need to stop and think?