Killing Of Bin Laden Research Articles

Sinister Translations: Law's Authority in a Post-9/11 World

What does the killing and burial of bin Laden tell us about the sites, sources, and nature of law’s authority in a post-’9/11’ world? If law is constituted by “acts of language [that] are actions in the world,” then the law embodied by these events is discernible through an analysis of Obama’s announcement on the killing of bin Laden. Obama’s announcement avoids the term ‘law’ yet makes present the relationship between ‘law,’ ‘justice,’ legitimacy, and violence. Through critical theory on language, translation, and political myth, this paper explores the translations at work in constructing law’s authority for a post-9/11 world.

“Spike the Football”: Truth-Telling, the Press and the Bin Laden Photos

This article looks at press interpretations of the role of images—specifically, images of national enemies in death—in constructing various duties of media truth-telling. Discourse about the need, or duty, to publish photos of the Nazi leaders hanged at Nuremberg in 1946 provides a context for examining discourse surrounding a similar decision that the White House faced after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. What was seen largely as a third-person effect seven decades ago is more often seen now as a first-person effect: We no longer need to persuade or daunt the slain enemy's die-hard followers, but we have created a set of obligations to persuade or please ourselves.

Unsettling America: the uses of Indianness in the 21st century

How Indianness Matters Now: An Introduction I. Old Battles 1. George Bush May Not Like Black People, But No One Gives a Damn About Indigenous Peoples: Visibility and Indianness after the Hurricanes 2. Embattled Images in the Marketplace: Commodity Racism, Media Literacy, and Struggles over Indianness II. Ongoing Wars 3. On Being a Warrior: Race, Gender, and American Indian Imagery in Sport 4. Defending Civilization from the Hostiles: Notes on the Ward Churchill Affair 5. Always Enemy Combatants? The Killing of Osama bin Laden and the Native American Struggle for Humanity III. New Fronts 6. Borrowing Power: Racial Metaphors and the Struggle Against American Indian Mascots 7. Alter/native Heroes: Native American Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition 8. De/Scribing Squ*w: Indigenous Women and Imperial Idioms in the United States Reclaiming Indianness: Notes Toward a Conclusions

Imagining Geronimo: an Apache icon in popular culture

His face has appeared on T-shirts, postage stamps, jigsaw puzzles, posters, and an Andy Warhol print. A celebrity and a tourist attraction who attended three World's Fairs and rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade, he is a character in such classic westerns as Stagecoach and Broken Arrow. His name was used in the daring military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and rumours about the location of his skull at a Yale University club have circulated for a century. These are just a few of the ways that the Apache shaman and war leader known to Anglo-Americans as Geronimo has remained alive in the mainstream American imagination and beyond. Clements's study samples the repertoire of Geronimo stories and examines Americans' changing sense of Geronimo in terms of traditional patterns--trickster social bandit, patriot chief, sage elder, and culture hero. He looks at the ways in which Geronimo tried with mixed results to maintain control of his own image during more than twenty years in which he was a prisoner of war. Also examined are Geronimo's ostensible conversion to Christianity and his image in photography and literature.

The End of the War on Terror and the Future of US Counterterrorism

The “Global War on Terror” came to dominate US foreign policy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The effort served as a guiding light for how the United States interacted with friends, allies, and adversaries and deeply influenced US priorities around the globe, in general, and in the wider Middle East, in particular. While it will likely never be announced as concluded, the Global War on Terror is effectively over, due to four separate but related reasons: the killing of Osama bin Laden, the perceived failure of counterinsurgency as an effective policy instrument, the significant costs of the effort, and the Arab Awakening. This does not mean, however, that the United States will no longer pursue counterterrorists. Drones and special forces have emerged as the key tools in US counterterrorism, and the United States is likely to continue pursuing terrorist cells and high-value targets aggressively across the globe for decades to come using these means. However, this practice should be viewed as one of many defense efforts that the United States carries out on a regular basis in order to guard the full range of US interests. Elements of the emerging US counterterrorism effort remain problematic, but the end of the Global War on Terror nevertheless presents Washington with a window of opportunity to reorder its relations with the nations and peoples of the Middle East and North Africa and frees up resources for the United States to tackle other emerging strategic priorities, such as the shift of global power to the Pacific, the revival of the US economy, and security challenges such as energy security and cyber defense.

Teaching the Intelligence Process: The Killing of Bin Laden as a Case Study

Teaching the Intelligence Process: The Killing of Bin Laden as a Case Study

“I Was Born . . .” (No You Were Not!)

While literary critics applaud Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father for its polyvocal self-authorizations, the book’s broader cultural context shows how politics and public performances constrain possibilities for multicultural identities. The fluid personal identity authorized by the book faces political pressures that require public reaffirmation of dominant narratives of both Whiteness and monocultural American supremacy. I trace specific counterattacks on Obama’s identity during the 2008 U.S. presidential election cycle, including “controversies” around his birth narratives. I evoke my own narratives as a Brown-and-bearded American immigrant to complicate my audiencing of Obama’s performative responses to “Birtherism” even after he was elected president. I focus especially on his interaction with Donald Trump prior to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. In such moments, I argue that Obama navigates away from self-authorizing his multicultural American identities and toward authorizing American power in ways that reinscribe a monocultural nationalism.

The Legality of the Killing of Osama bin Laden

In assessing the legality of the killing of Osama bin Laden one is reminded of a saying about the situation in Lebanon. If you think you understand it, it has not been properly explained to you.Of course, one major obstacle is that we do not have all the facts. However, we also do not have all the law.The complexity of analyzing the legality of the killing begins with the threshold issue of applicable law. Is the conduct to be analyzed according to domestic law or international law? If domestic law, then which country’s domestic laws are applicable? Certainly that of the United States and Pakistan would be applicable. Saudi law might also apply (e.g., on the basis of nationality), in addition to the laws of those countries that have another basis under their domestic law for exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction (e.g., on the universality principle).

The Relativity of Torture

Operation Neptune Spear in 2011, in which the United States government (USG) hunted and killed Osama Bin Laden (OBL) [1], part of the massively scaled War on Terror, revealed some interesting public and intellectual conceptions regarding the morality of “torture.” From a certain position, it seems simple enough to condemn torture, but the difficulty arises in: (1) Defining what exactly that term entails, i.e. what are the limits of acceptable interrogation; (2) The distinctions between intentions and consequences in justifying torture, and whether there is any moral relevance to these distinctions; and (3) Maintaining this morality in extreme cases of personal interest.

‘Gutsy’ Decisions and Passive Processes

The Obama administration has positioned itself against the militarized discourse of the Bush-era Global War on Terror (GWOT) by articulating a ‘return to the rule of law’. And yet, the figure of the US decision-maker remains as masculinized and militarily-oriented as ever. I demonstrate this seeming incongruity through an analysis of: first, the decision to render the Christmas Day (would-be) bomber of 2009 to the criminal justice system, a decision for which Obama was labelled ‘weak’ (hence feminine) on terrorism; and second, the killing of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy SEALs special operations team, a decision which reaffirmed Obama's warrior credentials, since it proved that he was the ‘strong’ (hence masculine) commander-in-chief. Both cases demonstrate that the hegemony of the masculine ‘warrior decision-maker’ remains privileged and facilitates the re-emergence of the GWOT ‘war machine’, despite the Obama administration's commitment to change.

The death penalty and the right to life

On the first anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, some reflection on the phenomenon of state-sponsored execution in an enlightened, civilised world seems appropriate. While this subject has an obvious international character, it also possesses some intriguing Irish and Northern Irish dimensions. In a wide ranging treatise, I examine how the rule of law has dealt with the death penalty at both the national and international levels, highlighting in particular the important influence of national constitutional laws in this sphere. I examine also the influence of the universally acknowledged right to life and the requirement of due process.

‘Has ‘Justice Been Done’? The Legality of Bin Laden’s Killing Under International Law’

The killing of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces on 2 May 2011 raises several questions of international law with regard to the legality of this particular operation and the permissibility of targeted killings of international terrorists in general. In this paper it will be argued, on the basis of an analysis of the applicable international law, that the killing of bin Laden cannot be justified under international humanitarian law because there is no armed conflict between the US and Al-Qaida. Even if one were to assume the existence of such an armed conflict, bin Laden’s killing would only have been lawful if Al-Qaida were to be considered an organized armed group within the meaning of international humanitarian law and bin Laden could have been killed qua membership in this group. Otherwise, his killing could only have been lawful if he was (still) taking a direct part in hostilities. In any case, in the absence of an armed conflict, under the applicable legal regime of peacetime the killing could only be justified in a situation of self-defence or an immediate danger for others. As this situation did apparently not exist, the killing of bin Laden amounted to an extra-judicial execution. On another note, the operation may also have violated international law by failing to respect Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty. Ultimately, this depends on the recognition of a (pre-emptive) right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, in particular taking into account the immediacy criterion.

Has ‘Justice Been Done’? The Legality of Bin Laden's Killing Under International Law

The killing of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces on 2 May 2011 raises several questions of international law with regard to the legality of this particular operation and the permissibility of targeted killings of international terrorists in general. In this article it will be argued, on the basis of an analysis of the applicable international law, that the killing of bin Laden cannot be justified under international humanitarian law because there is no armed conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda. Even if one were to assume the existence of such an armed conflict, bin Laden's killing would only have been lawful if Al Qaeda were to be considered an organised armed group within the meaning of international humanitarian law and bin Laden could have been killedquamembership of this group. Otherwise, his killing could only have been lawful if he was (still) taking a direct part in hostilities. In any case, in the absence of an armed conflict, under the applicable legal regime of peacetime, the killing could only be justified in a situation of self-defence or an immediate danger for others. As this situation apparently did not exist, the killing of bin Laden amounted to an extrajudicial execution. On another note, the operation may also have violated international law by failing to respect Pakistan's territorial sovereignty. Ultimately, this depends on the recognition of a (pre-emptive) right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, in particular taking into account the immediacy criterion.

Operation Neptune's Spear: The Lawful Killing of Osama Bin Laden

The reactions to the reports of Osama bin Laden's death were many: shock, relief, joy, wariness, elation, reservation. Not surprisingly, an intense debate soon emerged over the legality of killing Osama bin Laden. Critics – including the authors of the article, ‘Has “Justice Been Done”? The Legality of Bin Laden's Killing under International Law’, Kai Ambos and Josef Alkatout – raise many interesting and thought-provoking questions. The purpose of this submission is to respond to the arguments of Ambos and Alkatout. This response article argues that the killing of Osama bin Laden was lawful under international humanitarian law. More specifically, a careful legal analysis demonstrates that a non-international armed conflict exists between the United States and Al Qaeda. The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that Al Qaeda is an organised armed group under international humanitarian law. Osama bin Laden most accurately could be thought of as a strategic level commander of Al Qaeda. He has been actively involved in planning and co-ordinating armed attacks against military and civilian targets for years, including the most recent planning of attacks commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11. As such, he is clearly targetable under international law. Finally, the United States was well within its rights under international law to launch an attack into Pakistan against bin Laden.

Al Qaeda’s Post–9/11 Organizational Structure and Strategy: The Role of Islamist Regional Affiliates

The political transformations under way in the Arab world and the killing of Osama bin Laden raise serious questions about al Qaeda’s long-term viability. The secular-liberal Arab Spring protest movement appears to be winning the war of ideas over al Qaeda’s violent religious fundamentalism. Civil disobedience campaigns in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in forcing regime change in ways that a decade of al Qaeda terror attacks failed to accomplish. While it is too soon to write al Qaeda’s obituary, its erosion came well before the death of its historic leader. This essay examines al Qaeda’s post–9/11 evolution, its strategy, and its steady fragmentation. Since the destruction of its Taliban Afghan sanctuary, al Qaeda has been through many mutations, none of which, over time, has been successful. This essay argues that al Qaeda’s failures in Iraq contributed substantially to the organization’s decline.

The ambivalence of assassination: Biopolitics, culture and political violence

This article begins by presenting a biopolitical account of assassination and targeted killing events carried out by liberal regimes. It argues that forms of political violence are understood and made meaningful beyond the administrative frameworks and technical rationalizations often privileged in biopolitical analyses. Deploying Alan Feldman’s (1991) argument that political violence is an ‘emplotted action’ alongside William Connolly’s (2005 ) notion of resonance, it provides a genealogical account of how forms of assassination have been positioned within Western cultural understandings of political violence. The focal point of examination is the biblical heroine Judith, whose story has resonated as a preferred narrative structure for understanding and (de)legitimating acts of assassination among Western publics. Through its reading of the book of Judith, the article highlights the importance of ambivalence for understanding assassination as a form of political violence. The legacy of the moral problematique enabled by Judith is then illustrated in relation to US President Barak Obama’s May 2011 speech announcing the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The article concludes by suggesting that although the story of Judith may underpin contemporary assassination practices, it also offers a means of critically engaging with them.

The Pakistan Thorn in China–India–U.S. Relations

At a time when Pakistan is under intense scrutiny about its role in fighting extremism and terrorism, the world has been watching to see how Beijing decides to deal with Islamabad. Despite Pakistan’s growing diplomatic isolation in recent months, China’s support has been steadfast, at least publicly. Two weeks after the May 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani went to China on a four-day visit to celebrate the 60th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Of course, there is much to celebrate in a bilateral relationship that Pakistan’s ambassador to Beijing has described as ‘‘higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, stronger than steel, dearer than eyesight, sweeter than honey, and so on.’’ 1 China was the only major power that openly voiced support for Pakistan after bin Laden’s assassination, defending Islamabad and emphasizing that the Pakistani government may not have known about bin Laden’s presence on its territory. During Prime Minister Gilani’s visit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao affirmed that ‘‘Pakistan has made huge sacrifices and an important contribution to the international fight against terrorism, that its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity must be respected, and that the international community should understand and support Pakistan’s efforts to maintain domestic stability and to realize economic and social development.’’ 2 Wen went on to state that

The Killing of bin Laden and the Undermining of Public Health

The military raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden was preceded by a fake childhood immunization campaign meant to collect DNA samples for confirming the bin Laden family’s presence. This use of a public health activity under false pretences undermines the validity and effectiveness of international public health endeavours, and may put workers in danger. It is time for agencies and governments to declare that health and development programs will no longer be used as cover for violent or subversive adventures. In May of 2011, Osama bin Laden was shot dead by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was later reported that bin Laden family’s presence was likely confirmed via the comparison of DNA samples from bin Laden’s dead sister to samples taken from children in the Abbottabad neighbourhood. They were obtained via a childhood Hepatitis-B immunization program that was devised and implemented by US Intelligence for the sole purpose of locating bin Laden [1]. While acknowledging that the Hepatitis-B campaign was implemented for reasons unrelated to public health, the CIA insists that the actual injections were real and can therefore be considered a valid public health intervention [2]. But reports suggest that the duplicitous nature of the vaccine’s delivery did not allow for provision of the follow-up dosages required for proper conferral of immunization against Hep-B [3]. This means that the inoculated children do not have full immunity; their health has therefore been compromised. Concern has been voiced in the international public health community about the damage that this operation has done to the effectiveness of real public health campaigns, current and future. Two themes predominate: fear of greater distrust of public health campaigns, leading to reduced treatment compliance and vaccination coverage, and fear of backlash, perhaps violent, against individual health care workers. Public health campaigns, particularly vaccination programs, already suffer from public distrust. This is particularly true in Pakistan, where a 2007 polio vaccination program famously failed to immunize 160,000 children due to rumours that the campaign was “a conspiracy of the Jews and Christians to stunt the population growth of Muslims” [4] or an “American conspiracy” to cause widespread sexual impotence [5]. Similar stories arise from other parts of the developing world, such as Nigeria, where accusations of a population control agenda were also laid against the polio vaccine [6]. In such areas, the success of an immunization campaign depends strongly on the cooperation of local religious and community leaders. With public admission now that at least one such campaign was in fact a CIA operation, the chances of such future cooperation in that region –and others-are greatly reduced. In wealthier countries, of course, the anti-vaccination movement is similarly driven by conspiratorial sentiments, usually with pharmaceutical companies, rather than government agencies, typically painted as the villains. Distrust of vaccination campaigns endangers the workers. The 2007 scare in Pakistan involved cases of violence against the clinicians who gave the inoculations [7], an issue that is growing worldwide. By undermining the legitimacy of health programs, the Abbottabad raid has increased the likelihood of violence against all caregivers. American international health and development efforts have long been accused of being fronts for American intelligence. According to William Blum, a few decades ago USAID maintained “a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover” [8]. And well before the Abbottabad raid, the media reported The Killing of bin Laden and the Undermining of Public Health 2 of 3 on Pakistan’s suspicion that USAID efforts in that country were thin cover for CIA activities [9]. Health and development workers are thus unknowingly tainted with a history of official duplicity. Steps must be taken immediately to assuage the damage to public health that the Abbottabad raid and similar operations have wrought upon workers’ ability to protect both themselves and the populations in need. While most international health workers have become experienced in helping to diffuse anti-vaccination propaganda, now is the time for more official and systematic steps to be taken. There are rumours that WHO and UNICEF are devising special identification procedures for vaccination workers, to make it harder for them to be infiltrated by intelligence agents [7].While this is unlikely to deter infiltrations that have official state sanction, it is at least a first step in restoring public confidence. What is truly needed is for key agencies to issue individual and joint public statements, first to condemn the use of public health as cover for an act of military violence, and second to make assurances that despite whatever activities might have been permitted in the past, in future all public health activities and interventions will be free from any type of political or intelligence-related duplicity.

The Sovereignty Dodge and the Responsibility to Control: Should the US Do What Pakistan Won't Do?1

The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was justified by the Obama administration as an act of self-defense. Proponents of an expanded notion of self-defense argue that sovereignty implies responsibility not only for the protection of human rights, but also for the provision of public goods more generally, including effective territorial control. States which are unable to control their territory frequently become safe havens for militants who threaten the security of other states. Pakistan is a paradigmatic case of a ‘sovereignty dodge’ who, in the eyes of the United States, has forfeited its sovereign right to non-interference because of its failure to live up to its responsibility to control. In this article I explore the legality of US strikes against militant targets in Pakistan. I conclude that while international jurisprudence continues to adhere to a conservative reading of the rules on the use of force, states themselves have interpreted the law on self-defense more broadly, evincing a desire to keep the rules as indeterminate as possible.

Empire's Verticality: The Af/Pak Frontier, Visual Culture, and Racialization from Above

With the growing use of armed drones by the US homeland security state, the nexus of race, space, and visuality has developed a vector of verticality, what I call 'racialization from above', to supplement the long history of racialization on the ground, both in the United States and abroad. Taking the killing of Osama Bin Laden as a point of departure, this article considers how racialization from above transmutes the temporality of warfare through notions of pre-emption and endurance, recalibrates Orientalist imagined geography through recast concepts of proximity, and fixates on the capacity for 'precision targeting' along the borders of US imperial cartography. While doing so reveals how the raciality of the war on terror is produced through visual technologies, the article concludes by speculating briefly on how a counter-archive might enable us to see otherwise.