Jay Kuten: Political assassination killing democracy

The notion of a president with power of an absolute monarch is anathema to the concept of democracy.
THE killing of Osama bin Laden is charged in itself and the perceptions of it. My first reaction to the news was disbelief, followed by relief.
The suddenness of the death seemed oddly anticlimactic nearly 10 years after 9/ll, and after the needless invasion of Iraq with its cost in blood and money. As the fact sank in, I thought: "Good, maybe this will give Obama the cover he needs to get us out of Afghanistan."
I'm unwavering in my support of the basic ideals of the United States.
Service in its military during the Vietnam misadventure brought home the pride in carrying out the essential mission, even in the face of the serious miscalculations and flat-out lying of the civilian policy-makers who framed the mission.
That is preamble to my reflections about what was done in this case. I was not thrilled watching my fellow Americans bursting into a sudden celebratory response, waving the flag and shouting, "USA, USA", jumping up and down in the manner of the fans of a sporting event.
I could not bring myself to join their jubilation in that this killing is disquieting for many reasons.
Bin Laden's death, offered as "closure" to the families of 9-11 victims, raises as many questions as it seems to answer. Was it legal? The rationalisation given by the Obama administration was that this was done as an act of self-defence in the respect of Bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States.
Jeffrey Toobin, legal correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, argued that Bin Laden's capture and trial would have created endless complications in security, choice of venue, adduction of evidence and even the conduct of such a trial. Others focused on security, with the spectre of retaliatory kidnappings for ransom of Bin Laden.
There is the question of the nicety of the mission itself.
Whatever one thinks of the Pakistanis and the double-game their intelligence agency has been playing (as revealed by WikiLeaks), the government of Pakistan, a sovereign nation, is nominally friendly to the US, certainly friendly enough to be given billions annually in military aid. Nonetheless, the American President ordered an incursion on to this "friendly" soil to carry out the mission. We cannot know exactly what orders were given-whether "dead or alive" or starkly, "dead" - but dead is what Osama became.
Dead though unarmed but "resisting".
In the 1970s in the US, the Senate's Church committee unearthed instances of CIA political assassinations.
In response, President Gerald Ford issued executive order 11905 which stated: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." The term "assassination" was not defined, nor was it in subsequent orders signed by Presidents Carter and Reagan.
George Bush more or less acknowledged that the ban would not apply to Bin Laden.
Obama has clearly continued that policy and even extended it.
He has declared an intention to assassinate Anwar-Al Awlaki, an American-born Islamic cleric preaching hate on the internet, currently living in Yemen. Awlaki may be awful but he has never been charged with any crime.
It's not because of any sympathy for Osama bin Laden, who was probably a monster, that I find myself appalled by what appears to have been an act of political assassination, but rather love of my country and what it has stood for - notably the rule of law.
The notion of a president with power of an absolute monarch is anathema to the concept of democracy.
When Obama in describing this killing said "justice has been done" and when he finished by reminding people that America's capability as demonstrated in this action was not the result of its power but derived from of its definition as a country, "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all", I could not help but experience a heavy dose of irony and sorrow.
Whatever the world gained in Bin Laden's execution may be more than offset by what was lost.