Osama bin Laden is DEAD?!

[CheerfulYank]

?!

I don't think the US has ever held the principle that a fair trial is necessary for justice to be served. I don't think the US holds very deeply the belief that a suspect is innocent until proved guilty. I think the US really does believe that the end justifies the means. There is nothing in US involvement in world affairs in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to indicate anything but that default position for the US. There may be sporadic episodes where the US indicates that it holds principles such as those of a fair trial even for someone like Osama bin Laden, or support for an international body like the UN, but the basic position of the US is that it insists on the message to do as it says and not what it does. Look at lynching, segregation, the building of a huge wall on the border with Mexico ('Mr Gorbachev, tear this wall down')...

Many states in the US still use capital punishment. You can carry a concealed weapon in all but two states. There are many aspects of American history and culture that could be interpreted as giving terrorists the impression that they can do as the US does.

I don't think anyone but the most blindly optimistic terrorist or blindly optimistic commentator sees anyone winning here. The most you can hope for when fighting terrorists is to keep the terror to a manageable level. There can never be an outright victory against terror.

"I don't think the US has ever held the principle that a fair trial is necessary for justice to be served."

Trial before a jury for all crimes is part of the US Constitution (Article 3, Section 2).

"I don't think the US holds very deeply the belief that a suspect is innocent until proved guilty."

From WikiPedia - "Although the Constitution of the United States does not cite it explicitly, presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. See also Coffin v. United States and In re Winship."

"I think the US really does believe that the end justifies the means."

Well the above points are it's principles, but as we've agreed before few countries have managed to live up to their principles, but as I've said before that does not excuse us from trying.

"I don't think anyone but the most blindly optimistic terrorist or blindly optimistic commentator sees anyone winning here."

I think that terrorists will feel a sense of victory if they manage to drag the west down and get it to sell out its principles once they going gets tough, awkward or just too expensive.

The effects of apparently showing troubled regions of the world that it's OK to just kill and ignore justice should not be underestimated.

That's what it all says, but again, where the security of the US is concerned, I think all bets are off and have never really been on. Look at the McCarthy era and the riding roughshod over individual rights of American people that went on during that time in the face of a manufactured red scare. And look at the historical treatment of black people to see the limits of applying the Constitution to reality in American life. Look at the Patriot Act both as a kneejerk or instinctive reaction to a threat and as an example of willingness to cast aside concerns over civil rights when security is the preoccupation even when the initial event that provoked the response was long past. AFAIK, there is no language in the Act that explicitly requires that the Act be applied in a manner that is consonant with the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. A motion to add language to this effect was defeated along with another modification earlier this year

I don't think terrorists believe the west has any principles to lose.

Interesting discussion! You paint a truly chilling picture of the US, Mathanxiety. I agree that there are no winners in hte war against terrorism, and hate the fact that merely controlling the number of attacks makes us so dependent on the murky world of secret intelligence, where civil liberties are not worth tuppence.

But I still agree with BadgersPaws - if we say we are fighting because we want to protect our way of life, it has to be worth protecting. For me, civil rights, including the right to a trial is what should differentiate us from a government that just does what it wants.

Clearly no one remembers Benazir Bhutto stating that Osama had been murdered years ago.