The Death Penalty for All Terrorists

Much intelligent discussion of the current security crisis that the United States, and not just the United States, faces has centered on to what extent we and other civilized countries now find ourselves at war -- and if indeed we are at war what constraints precepts of natural justice and sound international jurisprudence impose on the retributive military actions that our government, perhaps aided by its allies, is currently contemplating.

This much seems clear and uncontroversial: our immediate enemy (I prescind here from considering those states who, directly or indirectly, sponsor terrorism) is not a sovereign political state, existing within defined territorial boundaries and composed of combatants and non-combatants. It is an international terrorist network, a private army, that has already declared war on the United States, and not merely the United States -- and that has already, by all the evidence, demonstrated its determination to wage war, not merely on the US political regime, but on American citizens and civil servants, at home and abroad. Any lingering doubt, especially in the Islamic world, that the Al Qaeda network and its acknowledged leader, Osama bin Laden, was directly responsible for the atrocities of Sept. 11 should have been removed by now with the concurrence of the government of Pakistan in this judgment.

Al Qaeda is not a political state, but it is certainly a band of pathological outlaws; and, it must be noted, Al Qaeda is not strictly speaking waging war: for its direct, deliberate, and intentional taking of the lives of non-combatants, it is engaging rather in a systematic campaign of wanton homicide against, at least, anyone who happens to hold an American passport. Th...

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...faced with another consideration. That terrorists, particularly terrorist leaders, in prison represent a continuing threat to our society which ordinary criminals, even heads of organized crime families, do not. It is easy for us to imagine the kind of atrocities, now in the name of extorting our government to release bin Laden or others, that members of Al Qaeda still at large might engage in to free him. Therefore, it seems there is a powerful argument, even for those of us who think the state justified in administering capital punishment only in those today practically non-existent cases where state self-defense demands it, that this may well be one of these extremely improbable cases. If this is so, the execution of bin Laden and his collaborators would not be an act of vengeful, cowboy retribution but the discharging of a weighty moral obligation by the state.