David Cameron calls Bin Laden's death a tragedy...

It wasn't lawful. It was just America being the bigger more power state doing what it wants. Any semblance on international law is a bit of a joke I admit but it is good concept to aim for imo. Some people think power countries like the United States should lead by example. It may be idealistic but is not pacifism or terrorist sympathizing and more often than those that claim it is have an interest in opposing any notion of international law in that they want their big power country to have power over weaker ones. They decry dissidents as terrorists sop they can carry out their own form of state terrorism. Russia does it, so does America.

If a french terrorist group did a 9/11 style attack on Britain we would work with France using international agreements/laws and work with therm in bringing the perpetrators to justice. We would not invade France or commit acts like sending in Navy Seals on an operation without permission (which is how wars can start).

Would you believe it but how you'd like America to behave isn't the litmus test of whether or not something is legal. Whether you agree with it or not, it is completely and utterly lawful to assasinate enemy commanders during a conflict. Frankly comparing America taking out enemy commanders to the acts of terror those groups themselves commit is absolutely bonkers and is indeed misguided ideology blinkering rational thinking. Sovereignty isn't an absolutely right that you can hide behind no matter what to harbour militants that wage war on other nations.
France isn't a failed terrorist-sponsoring state that harbours our enemies. At least make a comparable analogy. If the United States told Pakistan about the operation, the ISI would have moved him, simple as. Since Al Qaeda is waging war on America, they are well within their rights to eliminate members of the group.

They brake the very flimsy international law that already exists ins some way all the time. Like all super powers. There is no semblance of the any kind of law going on, it;s just states with big armies doing what they want. The point is to try and create internal laws so you can avoid as much conflict as possible. Or so when you do have wars you have stuff like conventions for human rights and so on. Conversely the definition fo whether something is legal or not is not what America does.

It isn't lawful in anyway for countries to barge into other states with their armed forces to get terrorist ring leaders without permission. Al Queda are not a country. If there were Al Quesda cells in the UK america could not just bring in it's troops and do whatever they like.

Anyway this is beside the point. Wishing there was organization between countries that would allow them to unite and bring intentional criminals like Bin laden to justice and to promote humanist goals on a global scale does not make you a terrorist sympathizer. Which is what we are arguing about. So fob off.

"Of course, it would be the neatest solution if the terrorist maniac were to be dispatched in the coming days, whether by an M16 carbine or a 10-rupee jezail. But it would not be the best or most satisfying outcome. [...] He should be put on trial, because a trial would be the profoundest and most eloquent statement of the difference between our values and his. He wanted to kill as many innocent people as he could. We want justice. It was a trial that concluded the tragic cycle of the Oresteia, and asserted the triumph of reason over madness and revenge."

Would you believe it but how you'd like America to behave isn't the litmus test of whether or not something is legal. Whether you agree with it or not, it is completely and utterly lawful to assasinate enemy commanders during a conflict.

'Legal' and 'lawful' are not synonyms.

Come on even Saddam got a trial even though his guilt was beyond question.

There's a huge difference between how you treat someone already in custody and how you treat someone who isn't. If Bin Laden had been captured alive then yes he should have been tried. Doesn't change the fact that the United States was within it's right to try and assassinate him.

Was the US within it's rights to carry out torture at Guantanamo? Was it within it's rights to use Bin Laden as an excuse to invade Iraq?


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Corbyn thinks German soldiers of WW2 were just victims of a sinister brainwashing cult

Every murder/assassination is a tragedy. Even Bin Laden was some mother's son. It was an un lawful extra judicial killing. The greatest tragedy is that he wasn't captured as he would have been an absolute goldmine of intelligence information. As Bin Laden was not armed at the time of his death I find it incredible that a professional special ops guy shot Bin Laden in the head, from that point of view the mission was a complete failure, although, as the CIA bankrolled and trained Bin Laden in his earlier years against the Soviets I imagine that it was the CIA that wanted him dead (if he really is dead).

No, and no (although they didn't really for the latter, WMD's were the main excuse). Neither of those incidents has any bearing though on the validity of the Bin Laden assassination.

Would you believe it but how you'd like America to behave isn't the litmus test of whether or not something is legal. .

Come on even Saddam got a trial even though his guilt was beyond question.

Tragedy was an extremely poor choice of word. This was a man responsible for the worst terror attack in history. Some may have preferred to see him answer for his crimes but what rational personal thinks it is a tragedy he was killed instead? Just to clarify here is the oxford definition of tragedy:

'an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.'

This is utterly stupid. The context for David Cameron is that there he's quoting Corbyn directly. The context for Corbyn is that he thinks we have to arrest and try enemy soldiers and commanders because killing them offends his delicate pacifist sensibilities. I doubt any people who condemned Corbyn for what he said will suddenly about turn when they hear the full passage.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.