Objection: Defensive Killing or Execution?
Now that the argument has been made that bin Laden was liable to be killed, this chapter addresses a particularly powerful objection against this view. The objection has been strongly given by Noam Chomsky, so it is his articulation of it that is engaged. Namely, the objection claims that the killing was in fact merely an act of revenge, aiming to kill bin Laden as a kind of extra judicial execution. Moreover, this objection argues that, in the least, bin Laden should have been captured rather than killed. I respond to this objection by arguing that, in fact, the best moral accounting of the killing is on the liability, rights based approach, not a desert based model. Therein I contend that bin Laden was properly liable to be killed, not merely captured, because of the unique and extraordinary way in which his capture would have actually exacerbated, rather than thwarted, his unjust threat.