Osama bin Laden Wasn't Killed?

I know people who think the bin Laden assassination was a hoax, otherwise, they argue, why did the Seals ditch the body at sea?

The answer is probably two-fold: it was the Navy Seals, after all, which provided the muscle for the operation. But probably more importantly, a burial at sea, while it can be scrupulously correct in Islamic ritual--reportedly it was--also disposed of the body without thereby creating a martyr's shrine.

That's important on the Indian subcontinent: veneration of a martyr's grave, that becomes a shrine for a saint, in Islam, or an altar to a local god, in Hinduism, has a long and bloody history. Better, people have no specific place for pilgrimage--except the mansion in Abbotabad; that can't be avoided.

In the fifth century, people speculated that Attila didn't die, because he was buried in a secret grave beneath the river Tisza. All the captives who worked to divert the river, and to dig the grave, were summarily executed. Attila as Told to His Scribes on this site.

We've read or heard stories of Jesus's resurrection, or, in the case of Kazantzakis, succumbing to the temptation not to be crucified, and going on, living his life anonymously, somewhere else. There is also Elizabeth Cunningham's Passion of Mary Magdalen, in which Jesus rises again: Cunningham claims: "Maeve put the erection back into the resurrection."

Wait for it: Osama bin Laden will rise again.

What about the legality of the President ordering the assassination of someone who has publicly declared himself an enemy, and boasts that he's attacked us? It's probably stretching the elastic limits of Presidential authority as Commander in Chief, but unfortunately, there are precedents, at least since Wilson, and certainly since Kennedy. JFK apparently approved plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His own assassination might very well have been blow-back. Lee Harvey Oswald had earlier defected to the USSR and later defended the Cuban Revolution.

The unreal world of government covert action and anti-government terror is a game that supposedly grown people play. Presidents are advised that they must, that it's their responsibility to Protect and Defend, that these super-secret operations are absolutely necessary.

And so, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, acted as judge, jury and Commander of the executioner.

If Obama had ordered bin Laden's capture, instead of murder, bin Laden's trial might have become a cause célèbre worldwide, and al Qaeda would have exploited it--to recruit more suicide bombers. Any dispassionate coverage of the trial would have infuriated true believers.

I suspect there is another, simpler reason why bin Laden was killed in the raid: Navy Seals, especially special units like the one which carried out the raid in Abbotabad, are probably trained to kill, not to capture.

Anyway, enough people, including Republican Congressmen, saw the gruesome photos of bin Laden, that we can be sure: he's dead.