Montreal in Technicolor

So, as everyone in the West has heard ad nauseum over the past week, the US, with the assistance of covert CIA operations, captured and killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. AT A MANSION. Here was GWB, looking for Osama in cave for his entire term. Then again, it would seem logical. Why would Osama, a multibillionaire by birth, be sitting an a fucking cave waiting to be captured. Ok, so his mansion didn't have internet or anything, but he obviously wasn't exactly living the life that CNN and Fox News painted him as having. The fact that Pakistan, a long-time ally against the War on Terror, was clearly either knowingly or unwillingly harboring the most wanted man in the world, had to be a source of anxiety and frustration. While Americans were celebrating in the streets, the more rational of us were left wondering something: whatever happened to the central tenet of criminal law and freedom, the tradition that the West prides itself on, habeas corpus?
Ok, this shouldn't be read as an indictment of Bin Laden's death, or a defense of his deplorable way of life. Instead, this is a call to reason, a call to return to the very values that North American society was built upon.
First, definitions. Habeas Corpus is defined as the right of the individual being arrested from arbitrary state action. In laymen's terms, you can't just grab someone without a warrant and hold them. It doesn't necessarily protect someone from not having a trial, but it's considered as the basis for most major legal systems.
Secondly, the US framed the assassination (boohoo sensitive people, that's what it was) as being a part of national self-defence.
Thirdly, most legal experts have concurred that until we know more about what transpired that day, we can look at this as extrajudicial, and without due process.


So what do we know so far?
Bin Laden was unarmed at his compound, and shot to death. No real evidence of struggle, a covert SEALS operation. Despite the fact that Bin Laden was a despicable human being, why did he not receive a trial? Why was he unarmed when shot to death, though the US characterizes him as an "armed enemy, a part of a resistance" and therefore can put to rest the fact that he was unarmed.
Obviously, the most obvious retort here is that the 3000 Americans who died on 9/11 were unarmed as well, but isn't the respect for the law and rights of the individual a fundamental tenet of American politics? Isn't that why there is a Constitution? I get that Bin Laden probably deserved, at least morally, every inch of what he got, but should be not also be extended the basic rights of individuals? I don't mean to be offensive, but it works against the US interests to perpetrate an assassination illegally. This will impact world opinion in a negative light, and the seeds of this will hurt the US image. Combined with Guantanamo, it becomes important to ask whether this assassination is consistent on the very values that the US makes a central part of its foreign policy in the Middle East.


This is obviously a complex issue, and I am not by any means a legal expert. This question has puzzled me, because I feel an emotional pull to not care if this bastard got a trial. But the political scientist in me sees the implications of killing a man in another country's borders and dumping his body in the sea, while with the other hand proclaiming that US-brand democracy, and rights are central to countries in flux in Egypt, Bahrain and Syria.


For interesting reading:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/201155113345557824.html