The death of bin Laden: Post the First

Less an organized post than to touch on several different points:
•Was it legal?
I’ve heard lengthy arguments over whether sending in the SEALS to shoot him comports with the laws of war or not. I honestly don’t know (especially since the White House has revamped its story of how it went down more than once), but I do believe it matters. The fact he’s Osama bin Laden and a horrible human being is irrelevant; if Israel can put Adolf Eichmann (a prominent Nazi player in the Holocaust) on trial, there’s no reason bin Laden can’t stand in the dock (for a related discussion, check Glenn Greenwald). Even the worst of people are entitled to stand in the dock—but given the Obama administration has now asserted the right to assassinate American citizens who are linked to terrorism (without any court procedure), I guess that’s one more principle down the drain.
As John McCain said in one of his saner moments, how we treat “them” is ultimately about us.
•Was shooting him a good idea? Aside from the legal/ethical argument, was there no possibility he had valuable intel for us?
•This does not prove torture “works.” In the first place, it does not follow that if prisoners divulge useful information when tortured, they could not possibly have done the same if they’d received a legal interrogation. Legal interrogations worked on Nazis, they work on hardened criminals—there’s no reason to assume they won’t work on terrorists.
And as pointed out here and here, the prisoners didn’t divulge everything they knew (Time bizarrely argues that the very fact one prisoner didn’t give information about one part of the puzzle was proof how important it was—so even when torture doesn’t work, it works). And the most recent session was under W., so apparently torture didn’t bring the kind of swift, real-time data it’s supposed to.
And yes, it’s torture. Not “enhanced interrogation” or “so-called enhanced interrogation” as some of our news media like to refer to it.
•Is the right wing rejoicing? Not exactly.
•Does it make a difference to the war on terror?
Probably not. Al qaeda isn’t SPECTRE and bin Laden isn’t Dr. Doom. Mideastern anti-American insurgencies and terrorism are loose, disorganized forces, and they’ll carry on fine without him. And even if they were quashed, we’d still have the Timothy McVeighs, Jim Adkissons and other right wing nutjobs in this country.
Even so, this would seem a great moment to declare victory and bring the troops home … but we’re not, except for some already planned reductions.
It would seem a great moment to put an end to the Patriot Act and all the other blows to civil liberties we’ve endured since 9/11. But as Glenn Greenwald points out at the link, the administration is pushing for to consolidate its powers to lock people up. And the news that bin Laden had contemplated train-based attacks had one legislator proposing a no-ride list to match the no-fly list.
The trouble is, so many forces favor increasing authoritarianism. Government officials like having increased authority. Military contractors love a big military. Washington has never gotten over its cold war conviction that it’s entitled to tell the rest of the world what to do and invade if they disagree.
There’s always been a fear of America, for all its power, being overwhelmed or subverted by a foreign threat (Communism, Naziism, bolshevism, Islamic terror, Illuminism, Freemasonry, etc.). 9/11 intensified it. And the country shows no signs of getting over it any time soon.