Victor Davis Hanson: Rules for Killing Rogues

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

The welcome end of Osama bin Laden at the hands of helicopter-borne American military commandos raises a number of issues.

Americans rejoiced at news of the end of this psychopathic mass murderer, and, privately, are probably relieved that he was not captured and extradited to Guantanamo. If bin Laden had been taken alive, we might be revisiting the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s failed efforts to try in a civilian federal court bin Laden’s subordinate, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the master planner behind 9/11.

But what, exactly, are the moral, legal, or practical rules in going after terrorist leaders or the savage dictators of rogue regimes? We went into a foreign country to kill, not capture, bin Laden. Was that killing permissible since a firefight preceded it, or because he was a terrorist rather than a head of state?

Furor surrounded the waterboarding of Mohammed that purportedly resulted in valuable intelligence about future terrorist operations. But why was that considered immoral and illegal when we routinely act as judge, jury, and executioner of suspected terrorists through Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan?...