War and the death penalty

By Emma Burnell / @scarletstand

So Osama Bin Laden is dead. I won’t mourn his passing. He was an evil man intent on supporting evil deads. On the other hand, I am not glad he’s dead. In an ideal world he would have stood trial for the crimes he committed.

I have and I retain a lifelong commitment against the death penalty. I believe it is never justified to kill someone who is not a current threat, and that justice has to be more noble than simple eye-for-an-eye retribution. I felt the hanging of Saddam Hussein was wholly wrong, despite the fact that I completely agree with proponents of his death as to the nature of his terrible crimes. I don’t believe that ultimately the world is made a better place by revenge killings whether by individuals or by the state.

But as I have written previously, I am not a pacifist. So when we are at war, I know that there will be casualties. That weighs heavily, as it should when human life is at stake, but is a risk I sometimes believe to be justified. There has been since 9/11 the first globalised (as opposed to world) war, and today, the leader of the opposing army was killed in a skirmish. Details of the raid on Bin Laden’s compound are still unclear and having followed the discussions on every issue since 9/11 will – I am absolutely certain – be disputed. Some conspiracy theory nut jobs are already peddling the kind of bizarre nonsense that keeps you on cable television in America. But it seems extremely likely that there was an exchange of fire and as such this was probably a justified killing.

It’s a difficult line to tread. It’s an area which is all about the shades of gray, where feelings nearly always run to the extremes of black and white.

There is a difference though between the death penalty and a justified killing in war. Basically it boils down to this: If I were alone with Bin Laden, I would have tried to arrest him to bring him to trial. If I were facing Bin Laden and an armed group of trained fighters, knowing that they planned future atrocities, I would try to arrest him, but if he were killed in the process I would not feel I had done morally wrong.