This has been bugging me, so I'm writing it in order to be done with it.
From the day the SEALs nailed bin Laden, from the very day of the event, I have heard people talk about how justice has been done, how his death closes a chapter, that the families of his victims have gained a degree of closure.
Et cetera, inter alia.
What bothers me? Am I some sort of terrorist-lover? Well, my discomfort concerns not one dead Arab but rather the debate in this country over the death penalty. It concerns what is good, for geese and for ganders.
If the right thing to do, to avenge the deaths of bin Laden's victims, is to hunt the muther down and kill him; if not only the victims but their families and indeed even all of their countrymen cry out for blood; if it's not only right but necessary that such a killer himself be killed, then surely the same must hold true for the domestic serial killer, the child-murderer, or the plain ol' ordinary cold-blooded homicidal maniac.
If it's justice, then it's justice.
I kept waiting to hear someone make an excuse, a rationale, a distinction. This killing was justified because it was in connection with war. However absurd a definition of war this present activity may be, it would at least provide the pretense of a distinction. I'm a historian. I understand how governments have to pretend things are true that are not.
But I never heard the strained rhetoric, the disingenuous lie. All I heard was an honest and heart-felt emotion. Good. The sonofabitch is dead. He had it coming.
Fellow citizens, I put it to you. If the death penalty is wrong, then killing bin Laden was wrong and those SEALs are murderers. Or, if you prefer, what was done over there in Pakistan in our name was right, and every state in the Union should hang 'em high. Death by automatic weapon, at the very least.
There, I've said my piece.
