It’s been a bad year for jihadis …

[aadler]

 
… but a very, very good year indeed for those who don’t want to be killed by them.

So, Anwar al-Awlaki is dead. That’s a shame, but only because they spent a million-dollar Hellfire missile obliterating him from the face of a grateful earth, instead of a 78¢ sniper’s bullet. He was an American citizen? that only means he was a traitor as well as an enemy, and thus more loathsome rather than deserving of more protection.

There really are no serious reservations attached to this welcome event. If I had been the one to kill him, I would have felt I had rendered human civilization a valuable service. As it is, I can only repeat what has already been said, in another (but slightly less pertinent) context:

Rest in pieces, asshole.

Comments

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

I often disagree with you politically, and as much as my personal preference for those who committed the train bombings in London on 7/11 is put them on trial in front of the world and send them to a dark hole for the rest of their lives after being found guilty.

I really cannot find any reason to disagree with Obama's choice to kill him. He joined an organisation that declared war on his own country, and people die in wars.

[aadler]

If Awlaki had been caught in the U.S., or caught at all, I don’t doubt that a trial would have been the result (if not necessarily the ideal solution). He operated outside the U.S., however, and — because capturing enemies means having to deal with captive enemies, most of the means for which were pre-emptively rejected by the current administration — we’re currently relying instead on long-distance assassination by drone strikes. That doesn’t particularly bother me, except for the likelihood that we’re losing the intelligence that could be gained by interrogating captured jihadis … but, in Awlaki’s case, the information he might have provided was far less significant than his own direct inspiration and exhortations, and any potential loss is far more than offset by the expeditious negation of this vile pollutant to humanity.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

He operated outside the U.S., however, and — because capturing enemies means having to deal with captive enemies, most of the means for which were pre-emptively rejected by the current administration — we’re currently relying instead on long-distance assassination by drone strikes.

I think you're overestimating the ease of capturing (as opposed to merely killing) a specific enemy leader. Yes, it's possible -- but it's not as easy or safe as popular fiction makes it seem. It made perfect sense to kill Al-Awlaki rather than to risk American lives and the success of the operation in a difficult attempt to capture him alive.

[aadler]

That’s essentially what I said about Awlaki himself. My disagreement with the wholesale avoidance of captures, and my concern with the loss of potential intelligence, was expressed in regard to the larger process. His being extinguished is an unalloyed good.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The one case in which we probably should have tried for a capture was the case of Osama bin Laden. I suspect that the military opted for a kill because they did not trust the US civilian authorities to keep him in prison (or execute him), instead of releasing him as part of a some sort of peace treaty. Note the Karma Houdini fate of Yasser Arafat, and Olmert's release of some very, very bad men. And, of course, trying for a capture would have meant some additional risk to the forces involved: he might have had a holdout weapon and been able to effectively use it. Of course, I'm glad we killed Bin Laden anyway.

[aadler]

No argument from me.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

It seems al-Quaeda is finished as a force to be reckoned with, and that is very much a cause to celebrate.

[aadler]

Not finished, probably, but they have been enormously and gratifyingly diminished. Mostly by dying in job lots, which I tend to see as an undiluted good.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Amusingly enough, "in pieces" was exactly how his clan-mates found his corpse :)

[aadler]

Thus my choice of epitaph to cite.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

It's too bad he didn't suffer, though.

[aadler]

I really have no interest in seeing such people suffer. I delight in their fear, defeat and destruction, but suffering per se isn’t really productive. The part of which I approve is that he’s thoroughly, solidly dead.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I was mostly joking, but it depends on what you mean by suffer. What I really would like would be if he had just a few minutes in which he just saw death coming in toward him ... knew his time was up, and who was doing him in.

Being a person who believes in the afterlife, I suspect he'll get what's coming to him one way or another.

[aadler]

Seeing death coming at him … yeah, that would have been nice. Though I suspect the time-window there would have been a second or two, if that much.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I suppose a couple of seconds would have seemed like an eternity ...

[aadler]

Good enough for government work.