Topics Ethics

Question Upon learning that Osama bin Laden has died, many people decided to take to the streets and celebrate. This is the celebration of a person's killing, something which is extremely rarely celebrated. On the one hand, his death represents the putative end to a threat (though the jury is out on whether that's true); on the other hand, he was a living human being and, though a criminal, deserved a legal process rather than a killing. Should we be rejoicing that bin Laden was killed, or should we let it pass as an evil lesser than it would have been to let him run free?

Accepted:
May 4, 2011

Comments

Let me be clear before making my further comments: I think our killing bin Laden was justified and a good outcome, so I certainly disagree with the suggestion in your last question. Furthermore, I think the Taliban's killing a U.S. soldier is not a good outcome and 9/11 was a tragedy and morally abominable. Having said that, consider how we (Americans) feel when pictures of dead U.S. soldiers are publicized by our enemies (remember Mogadishu) or how we felt when we saw people (e.g., in Pakistan) celebrating after 9/11.

So, privately celebrating (and feeling happy about) bin Laden's death may be an appropriate reaction for a variety of reasons (e.g., he deserved punishment for his crimes, it may reduce terrorism, etc.). But there are better and worse ways to celebrate. And doing so in large numbers in public seems inappropriate to me, both because it is likely to foment anger against us (and perhaps inspire terrorism) and because it does not seem the most dignified response. Regardless of who is right (see disclaimer above), our public demonstrations look to some others in the world much like the gloating we were sickened by after 9/11. Similarly, making a gruesome photo of bin Laden''s death public will look to some like the publicizing of pictures of dead U.S. soldiers. (There will be, I suspect, better ways of proving he has been killed.)

Whether bin Laden deserved to be dealt with through a legal process is another question. It seems justified that he was treated under the rules of engagement for war and hence should be treated as a combatant and not a suspect in a criminal case. However, even under that assumption, had he tried to surrender, he should have been captured rather than killed. I trust that the Navy SEALs were ready to capture him had he surrendered. One might second guess them if one wishes. But I don't wish to.

Lots of good questions here. I see two main issues in what you write. The first, which you close with, is whether the killing was appropriate in the first place. The second, implicit in where you begin, is what to make of the celebration of bin Laden's death.

Start with the first. The administration claimed, at least as of a few days ago, that the intent was to take bin Laden alive, but that he was killed because he resisted in some not-clearly specified way. However, let's assume for the sake of exploring what to say that the intent was never to take him alive in the first place.

You say that even he deserved a legal process rather than a killing, and there's no doubt: the idea that the government should be executing people without judicial process is a very disturbing one. Ideally, one might think, bin Laden should have been brought before some judicial body, whether an American court or the International Criminal Court, though there's room to doubt the prudence of that project. In any case, there's a range of opinion about whether the killing of bin Laden was lawful. Here's a piece from Salon Magazine by Emma Mustich that reviews some of the debate. What the discussion suggests is that killings like this might be lawful even if they weren't the outcome of a trial, but the question is legally complex and not something that philosophers can sort out on their own. What seems clear is that even if there's room for cases such as this, we don't want a single individual -- including the president -- to be able to make such decisions outside all checks, balances and possibility of review. There needs to be some legal framework governing even extraordinary cases, though just what the framework should be is not easy to say.

That brings us to your second issue: what do we make of the celebration of bin Laden's death?

The first thing I'd say is that I wouldn't judge harshly. I'll confess that when I heard the news, I felt a momentary surge of satisfaction. It would be surprising if bin Laden's death didn't provoke strong emotions. But I wasn't inclined to indulge that emotion and I think that on the whole it's better not indulged. Eddy Nahamias has given a couple of reasons. One is that too much celebration might provoke retaliation. The other was that it is not, as Eddy puts it, a "dignified response."

Indeed it isn't, though just how to think about dignity in this sense is an interesting question. Be that as it may, I'd like to suggest a couple of other considerations. (I suspect that they have some connection with the point of the notion of dignity that Eddy has in mind.) To start with, I'd put it this way: when I think of the people whom I most admire morally, and whose wisdom I'd be most likely to trust, they aren't people who revel in anyone else's death -- even someone like bin Laden. This isn't to say they think killing is always wrong, nor, more particularly, that they would think what happened to bin Laden was wrong. But they share two traits. The first is that they tend to see our commonalities and connections with other people -- even people like bin Laden -- as real and morally important. But for grace or luck, any of us might have turned out far worse than we did, and even though bin Laden is at the far end of the scale, thinking of him as merely a monster isn't a way to think clearly. The second is that the people I have in mind worry that indulging such feelings is not likely to lead to good results. There's a difference between justice and vengeance, but the desire to see justice done is not always easy to separate from the sheer, unconstrained desire for revenge. And that is a desire that's caused a world of woe. Better a more reflective response -- even if it's preceded by an utterly understandable response of a less reflective sort.