Were you for killing Bin Laden?

[ReapReason]

"We have discussed the “culture of death” numerous times before on this blog. This description of Western Culture was used by Pope John Paul II. Fundamentally it refers to the fact that in the modern, western world, especially America death is increasingly seen as a “solution” to problems. Has a child come along at an inconvenient time? Perhaps the baby has been diagnosed with defects perhaps there is some other wrenching problem regarding the pregnancy such as the poverty of the mother. The solution? Abort the baby. Has a criminal committed heinous acts? Kill him through capital punishment. Is an elderly or sick person suffering from a reduced quality of life? Perhaps they are bedridden or experiencing the pains of the dying process. Solution? Euthanize them. Does raising children and dealing with a larger family cause hardships: economic and emotional? Do children cause stress? Simple, contracept so that they don’t exist in the first place. So you see, the death or non-existence of human beings is increasingly the “solution” to problems and this is what is meant by the “culture of death.”

patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2012/06/death-penalty-obsessiveness.html

“the catechism says something along the lines of civil society having the right to protect itself from those who would commit heinous crimes, and if the only recourse available to ensure society’s safety is to put the criminal to death, then it is justified. However, Pope John Paul II pointed out so very clearly and rightly that we have the means to protect society, as a general rule, without using the death penalty. If we can do so, then we should”

 

[SuperLuigi]

I was sharing a video with a friend, in which Ross Douthat schools Bill Maher on religion, and by the end of the video, Bill Maher raised a very legitimate question about how Christians should stand on the death of Bin Laden, quoting Jesus’ sermon on the mount in which he proclaims ‘Do not repay evil with evil and turn the other cheek.’

How do we as Christians work our way around this issue? My friend suggested that perhaps Christians don’t really wanna follow what Jesus proclaimed, and I think he may be right.

How do Christians stand on the death of bin laden?

The Just War Criteria.

It simply is not always possible to “turn the other cheek”, and that’s why its important for those making such decisions to understand what obligation they have.

Turning the other cheek is often a more perfect act but not always an obligation.

If every Christian turned their cheek, we’d be living a world ruled by the likes of Nazis, secular facists and Islamic theocracies as second class citizens at best.

The Church recognizes there has to be some semblance of societal stability, and the initial war in Afghanistan** then** was probably just and perhaps the only just war since WWII.

My post here should NOT be used as an excuse to go out and do harm or to not turn your cheek, it is important to understand what obligation you have.

My vote was undecided because it would have been preferable to have captured him.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I am not a Thomist if that means blindly agreeing with everything a Aquinas thinks; and it would simply be an act of ignorance to assume that all Thomists agree on how Aquinas is to be interpreted.

I wasn’t saying that you have to agree with everything that Aquinas thinks. I’m simply saying that for somebody who respects Thomism so much you sure had a very rude response, and made a lot of unfounded accusations, to somebody who made a Thomistic argument-backed up by a highly regarded Thomistic Professor, no less.

Few if any on this forum seem to be aware that there are two different schools of Thomism: Transcendental Thomism and Existential Thomism.

Interesting, I indeed never have heard that. I’ll have to do some research.

As for the death penalty: It is not an intrinsic evil. I have not said that there is no possible circumstance where the death penalty is not justified; However we simply disagree on when it is justified.

Correct. I know you are not against the death penalty in principle, but I agree with Dr. Feser; the death penalty is appropriate for proportional crimes.

There is a difference between arguing against the Death Penalty and arguing against Americas reasons for using the Death Penalty. This is essentially about context.

I never said it wasn’t.

As for Fesser; the assumption here of course is that there is an act of evil that intrinsically deserves “physical death” and that the government automatically has in principle the unconditional right to take human life when ever we find out that somebody has committed this great evil. Most importantly Fesser is distorting the conceptual function of proportionality by placing the measure of moral consequence in the same context as being and potentiality. None of this has been defended rationally; it has merely been assumed from the beginning. This is not to say that proportionality doesn’t apply, but the moral context changes the extent to which does.

I’m confused on what you mean here. Are you trying to say that the government only has the right to initiate the death penalty when there’s no other option? Because I think this opinion has less backing than Dr. Feser’s (incidentally, I STRONGLY suggest you read the comments. You might notice that I played devil’s advocate in a big way and made the exact same argument you did; the responses to it are very interesting).

Also there are different kinds of punishment with different motivations behind them. There is a difference between defending the common good by locking people up so that they do not bring harm to society, and inflicting death as a revenge for loss of human life. These are two different kinds of punishment; one is a necessary and intrinsic consequence of losing ones freedom, and the latter - “the American form of the death penalty” - is a malicious act born out of hatred toward a personal-being, rather than a desire to protect the common good.

By saying this, you’re ignoring Dr. Feser’s whole argument, which is that revenge in a limited sense is not a bad thing. Also, the death penalty is justified BECAUSE humans have intrinsic value; we are, rightly, assuming that humans have the free will to do great evil. In this respect we are higher than non-rational animals.

This, of course, means our actions have consequences we must accept, and sometimes the just response to certain actions is indeed death. Osama bin Laden is certainly such a person. I’m not sure how you can argue that the massacre of thousands is not deserving of death, but by all means if you want to make that argument please do so. Catholic teaching, though, is that there are such things as less serious and more serious sins.

Law is essentially about protecting the common good; this is what justice in the context of governing human society is about. Deciding who deserves to live and who deserves to die is nothing more than playing God.

I disagree. You know why. This is just repeating your claim without responding to Feser’s argument.

It is not at all evident that the nature of love demands the death of those who commit genocide.

The fact that it’s not evident is why Dr. Feser made the argument.

It demands spiritual death and it also demands that the law prevents further genocide by imprisoning the threat. The death penalty is only justified when no practical alternatives are available. The possibility of moral Rehabilitation is always a greater good than the Death Penalty.

I disagree. This is just unsubstantiated opinion and ignores Dr. Feser’s whole argument.

Again, I encourage you to read the comments, and pay attention to the responses to my posts in particular. They are quite interesting.

 

[garn9173]

The world is better off without him and we need to wipe the rest of Al Qadea off the face of the earth.

 

[Actaeon]

The fact still remains that several people inside Obama’s administration have publicly stated that it was indeed a kill mission, and not a capture mission. Stating that he was to be captured alive in the case that he did actually surrender is not equivalent to a just action in his murder. You are going out of your way to justify the murder.

Still doesn’t mean anything to me. We’re not talking about a civilian here, we’re talking about a combatant. Combatants are valid military targets. You can, indeed, authorize a mission to eliminate a valid enemy target. You don’t have to specify that if the person surrenders you have to apprehend them and cannot harm them, that is built into the Geneva convention. However, until a combatant surrenders, they can be killed. The military is not the police… they do NOT have to do everything in their power to apprehend rather than kill enemy forces during a just war.

And killing a combatant who is niether wounded nor has surrendered is not murder at all. Simply put, active combatants cannot be murdered in a battle space other than by unlawful combatants… So I’ll thank you to stop attempting to use the logical fallacy of Red Herring Judgemental Language to poison this discussion.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Still doesn’t mean anything to me.

Oh, so you will only listen to reason when someone agrees with you, but given contrary evidence, you will ignore it. Sounds like an awesome plan. Let me know how that turns out for you.

We’re not talking about a civilian here, we’re talking about a combatant. Combatants are valid military targets. You can, indeed, authorize a mission to eliminate a valid enemy target. You don’t have to specify that if the person surrenders you have to apprehend them and cannot harm them, that is built into the Geneva convention. However, until a combatant surrenders, they can be killed. The military is not the police… they do NOT have to do everything in their power to apprehend rather than kill enemy forces during a just war.

If you want to classify bin Laden into an enemy soldier, that is fine. But in so doing, you must agree that attacking him in this manner is an assassination and not just a ‘mission to eliminate a valid enemy target.’ Last I checked, the United States opposed assassinations, political or military, because, among other reasons, it is murder.
And, while it is true that the military is not the police, the military has plenty of access to non-lethal weaponry: clay and rubber bullets, tear gas, flash grenades, tasers, sleeping gases, and probably a host of other such weapons that have not been disclosed to the public. Killing him was not a necessary action.

And killing a combatant who is niether wounded nor has surrendered is not murder at all. Simply put, active combatants cannot be murdered in a battle space other than by unlawful combatants… So I’ll thank you to stop attempting to use the logical fallacy of Red Herring Judgemental Language to poison this discussion.

Battle space? He was in hiding in a manison in Abbottabad, Pakistan. While there were some missions of the War on Terror inside Pakistan’s border, I do not believe that Abbottabad could be considered “battle space.”

I will thank you to stop using the logical fallacy of Cherry Picking to poison this discussion.

 

[johnnyjones]

His death was necessary to prevent the orchestration of further killings of innocent human beings. His philosophy was the death of infidels and the Great Satan.

 

[Actaeon]

Oh, so you will only listen to reason when someone agrees with you, but given contrary evidence, you will ignore it. Sounds like an awesome plan. Let me know how that turns out for you.

Actually, I will listen to all sorts of reasons… but when someone claims that a covert action to eliminate a valid military target is murder (and now assassination), and that assertion flies in the face of international law on the subject, then that is not reason and I will dismiss it duely.

The reason it makes no difference is not because they said that the goal was to eliminate bin Laden by killing, but rather because whether the goal was to kill him or not is irrelevant. He was a valid military target subject to elimination, and that fact remained as long as he did not surrender or become incapacitated. Therefore to say that the troops set out on a mission to kill him is irrelevant, because he was ALLOWED to be killed.

If you want to classify bin Laden into an enemy soldier, that is fine. But in so doing, you must agree that attacking him in this manner is an assassination and not just a ‘mission to eliminate a valid enemy target.’ Last I checked, the United States opposed assassinations, political or military, because, among other reasons, it is murder.

First of all, you might want to do a little bit of research on what constitutes assassination, because it is apparent that you’ve missed some fine details. For the quotes, I am drawing from this source.

Both the Hague IV Convention and the laws of war permit attacks upon valid military targets at any time or place

Civilians who work directly to conduct the war, or occupy a role normally held by a soldier, are valid targets. There is also a legal consensus that a civilian head of state who serves as commander-in-chief of the armed forces falls within this category

It is important to note that the Article 23(b) ban on treachery does not preclude the use of either stealth or surprise, and does nothing to change the basic rule that combatants are still legally subject to attack at any time or place.

It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy

So, to recap… assassination during wartime is the use of treachery to eliminate a valid military target. Elimination of unlawful targets is always condemned, but Osama bin Laden was a legal target. Covert actions and surprise attacks are not regarded as “treachery”, and therefore the action of the SEALS to eliminate Osama bin Laden does not meet the definition of assassination by the standards of any international agreement (or even by the more strict US Law of Land Warfare)

And, while it is true that the military is not the police, the military has plenty of access to non-lethal weaponry: clay and rubber bullets, tear gas, flash grenades, tasers, sleeping gases, and probably a host of other such weapons that have not been disclosed to the public. Killing him was not a necessary action.

None of those technologies is mandated for use in a just war for use against any opposing force. Furthermore, in a just war, one side does not have an obligation to use less than lethal force to capture valid targets if such action would increase the danger of loss of life to the aggreived party.

Battle space? He was in hiding in a manison in Abbottabad, Pakistan. While there were some missions of the War on Terror inside Pakistan’s border, I do not believe that Abbottabad could be considered “battle space.”

Since al quaida is by legal definition an organization of unlawful combatants precisely because they are not composed as a sovereign organization (among other reasons), it comes as no surprise that the efforst of the war on terror are considered GLOBAL.

I will thank you to stop using the logical fallacy of Cherry Picking to poison this discussion.

Sure, the moment you tell me how I was cherry picking I will stop… but randomly scrolling down wikipedia’s list of logical fallacies and accusing me of one does not constitute a logical flaw in my argument.

I recognized your sources, and then promptly told you how your interpretation of what was said is irrelevant since “kill missions” are perfectly allowable under both the just war doctrine and international laws of warfare. In other words, I didn’t reject your source, I rejected your interpretation of it.