Killing foreign leaders whom we've previously supported has been an ongoing disaster.

[upstatecajun]

The plane I was on landed in Washington, D.C., Sunday night, and the pilot came on the intercom to tell everyone to celebrate: our government had killed Osama bin Laden. This was better than winning the Super Bowl, he said.

Set aside for a moment the morality of cheering for the killing of a human being --which despite the pilot's prompting nobody on the plane did. In purely Realpolitik terms, killing foreign leaders whom we've previously supported has been an ongoing disaster.

Our killing of Saddam Hussein has been followed by years of war and hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths. Our attempts to kill Muammar Gadaffi have killed his children and grandchildren and will end no war if they eventually succeed. Our attempts to kill Osama bin Laden, including wars justified by that mission, have involved nearly a decade of senseless slaughter in Afghanistan and the rest of the ongoing global "generational" war that is consuming our nation.

The Taliban was willing to turn bin Laden over <1> for trial both before and after September 11, 2001. Instead our government opted for years of bloody warfare. And in the end, it was police action (investigation, a raid, and a summary execution) and not the warfare, that reportedly tracked bin Laden down in Pakistan. After capturing him, our government's representatives did not hold him for trial. They killed him and carried away his dead body.

http://www.liberalohioan.com/Swanson-killing_solves_nothing.html

[Kolesar]

1. Saddam Hussein was hardly a client of America, despite what Swanson insinuates

He was a useful tool to counter the Iranians after their theocracy displaced their dictator (Shah Reza Pahlavi).

[H2O Man]

2. The relationship

between US intelligence and Saddam predated the Iraq v Iran war by decades.

[Kolesar]

3. tangential...eom

[H2O Man]

4. not

[Shallah Kali]

5. exactly

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Central_Intelligence_Agency#Saddam_Hussein_as_40-year_CIA_asset

[sabrina 1]

10. Saddam Hussein was installed by the US. Another example

of our history of toppling democratic leaders and replacing them with puppets. His relationship with the US goes back to the sixties. Reagan loved him, Rummy brought him gifts from Reagan.

The OP left out Noriega, another of our puppets we went after and killed. You would think these dictators would realize that the US is not a loyal friend and will turn around and kill them when they show any sign of independence.

These horrific cold war policies of toppling democratic, left-leaning leaders popular with their own people and installing unpopular oppressive dictators in their place has caused so much misery in the world for the past several decades, including untold numbers of deaths, torture and the general destruction of societies around the globe, that you would think it is time to stop.

Even now we are supporting several brutal dictators, in Uzbekistan eg, depriving those people of the opportunity to decide their own destinies. Karamov of Uzbekistan mowed down protestors a few years in an incident that was condemned by World Human Rights orgs and called genocide.

But in the Wikileaks cables it was clear that the US knows how bad he is but, as we read 'he lets us build bases in his country'. And THAT justifies the horrific policies of torture and murder, and policies so bad that a British Ambassador quit in protest. But still, we support him, legitimize him, encourage him. But when we don't need him any more, we will rail against him, talk about how brutal he is, and justify assassinating him by revealing what they have known for years, but looked the other way.

Maybe it is this association with dictatorial figures who we support, that has made the US so comfortable with torture itself.

The world however is changing, and people are demanding better lives and do not want us interfering in their affairs. Latin America, in country after country, has kicked out its US supported governments and are now prosecuting many of them for war crimes.

The same thing is beginning to happen in the Arab world, our old dictator friends are being removed and prosecuted for crimes against their people. This makes it clear to the world, that the US has been supporting evil leaders rather than democratic leaders chosen by their people. Which means no one believes us when we talk about 'spreading democracy'.

[diane in sf]

6. They kill them instead of putting them on trial and letting them speak freely--that could reveal

more about the way we conduct international business than those in power are comfortable with. Bin Laden was a tool of the CIA in Afghanistan and the Bin Ladens in general are bush business partners.

[Bonobo]

7. We put them in office because they are oppressive brutal leaders on our side.

We take them out because they are oppressive brutal leaders not on our side.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. Have you ever read Charles McCrary's "The Tears of Autumn"?

Without spoiling the book, let me just say that this phenomenon of killing foreign leaders whom we've previously supported extends back to JFK and Diem.

The book is fiction but lays out a pretty compelling picture of why you don't want to engage in extra-judicial assassinations as a policy.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. "He who fights with monsters should take care that he doesn't become a monster in the process.

Nietzsche also... "when you gaze for a long time into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

In other words when we fight the darkness, we necessarily allow that darkness to set the terms of engagement. The abyss doesn't play by our rules, and fit our categories, and thus begins undermining the very distinctions that we need to maintain to keep it at bay.