Europe Questions Bin Laden’s Killing

May 05 2011           Jump To Discussion

BRUSSELS – While Americans flooded the street in major cities across the U.S. celebrating the death of the world’s most wanted man, Europe questions the legality and morality of the murder.

Only one day after President Barack Obama announced that U.S. special forces had killed Osama Bin Laden, details began to emerge that he was not armed during the attack.

That has many European key figures express their concern that the U.S. may engage in the business of killing unarmed, defenseless individuals.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: ‘I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done.’

He went on to say ‘In those circumstances, I think it’s also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help.’

While joyful Americans poured into Times Square to chant ‘USA, USA, USA!’ and hit the Internet to snap up T-shirts reading ‘We Got Him’ and ‘Hey Osama, Tell Hitler We Said Hello.’, Europe also questioned the morality and dignity of the American public as they seemingly reveled in Bin Laden’s killing evidenced by signs that read: “Obama 1 – Osama 0″ or “99 problems, but Bin Laden ain’t one!”

The former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has also been outspoken on the issue, claiming that the killing made President Obama look like a ‘mobster’.

Livingstone said the U.S. decision to ‘blow out’ the Al Qaeda chief was wrong and he should have been made to stand trial instead. ‘We should have captured him and put him on trial,’ he said.

‘It’s a simple point – are we gangsters or a Western democracy based on the rule of law?

This less than favorable response by Europe, a nation that showed great solidarity with the U.S. since the 9/11 attack, to Bin Laden’s death being celebrated in the U.S. has outraged many Americans.

Quickly a slue of put-down U.S. slogans and blogs appeared on the internet labeling Europeans as “‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys” and called them “arrogant, smug, thoughtless and thankless”.

It wasn’t only Europe however that expressed concerns with the public “gloating” celebration of Bin Laden’s death.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an association of about 700 conservative congregations in the U.S., said its tradition ‘warns us not to celebrate the death of any human being, even of our worst enemies.”

The association did add this to their statement: “… but it does not stop us from gratitude that some measure of justice has been exacted”.

One European however did see the American dancing in the streets jubilation in a different light.

Hall Gardner, professor of international politics at the American University of Paris, said the key difference was not in antipathy to Bin Laden – that is shared – but in how different the future looked from Times Square or the Champs-Elysees.

 

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