[lbo-talk] Fidel: El asesinato de Bin Laden/The assassination of Bin Laden

[Somebody Somebody]

Wojtek: If there is any cynicism in what I wrote about it, it is about the crocodile tears shed by the sanctimonious sour grapes lefties that OBL was not tried. Gimme a break. Since when these folks have such a sudden bout of confidence in the bourgeois criminal justice system? If he was tried, they would complain that the trial was a mockery of justice - as they do every time their anti-establishment celebrity figures get behind the bars or on the gallows. And rightfully so. Do you think that there is any place on Earth where OBL would get a "fair trial" by any stretch of imagination? The greatest reality show that he engineered makes it impossible. 

Somebody: I agree that this is cynicism. This seems beneath you, frankly.  You're ridiculing the bourgeois justice system? I thought you were opposed to infantile left-wing anti-statism. I don't how any serious person on the left who thinks summary execution is equivalent to even an egregiously miscarried trial by jury.

When Turkey located Abdulla Ocalan, a man arguably responsible for thousands of deaths in the Kurdish war for independence, they arrested him and put him on trial. And when the Europeans pressured Turkey to abandon the death penalty, they commuted his original capital sentence to life imprisonment. I would just as well see the Turkish government charged for their crimes in Kurdistan, but in any event it's remarkable that they should be more civilized in the matter than the United States. In fact, this is how most countries handle terrorist leaders.

I'm going to assume everything you've written about this is satire. I think you know this isn't about crocodile tears, but about being opposed to the U.S. assassinating people around the world at will. Again, most countries just don't do this sort of thing. I don't think it's too much to ask that the U.S. act like a normal civilized, yes bourgeois country.