Dealing with Messy Realities

When it comes to "assassinating" rogue dictators, tyrannical rulers, thugs, terrorists, and the like, it is far easier to kill than capture and try them.  When it comes to dealing with liberal "anguish" over the messiness of dealing with rogues, it seems much more convenient to take them out, than to bring them back and put them on trial before a tribunal or a civil court.  We are thankful that OBL (the nefarious Osama) has been eliminated as an enemy, but had he been captured, we can almost be assured that it would have been a hairy, hand-wringing business trying to deal with the legal issues surrounding this fellow.  When liberals capture rogues black and white issues turn into multitudinous shades of gray.  A person could sit in jail for years, and there is the possibility that some technicality could make it impossible to get justice.  It was far less messy politically to take OBL out.  Would I be insinuating a Machiavellian convenience, pragmatism, and practicality is behind killing, rather than capturing such types?  Sure we lose out on intel that we could get from the very lips of such an enemy, but many questions seem to be eliminated in the aftermath.  It's done.  It can't be reversed.  And, now it gets hairier-what if they had raided the compound and killed the wrong guy?  What then?  I suppose we could throw out a thousand hypotheticals.  Is clarification in order? 

Victor Davis Hanson suggests that we ought to clarify the issues . . . .

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/266439/rules-killing-rogues-victor-davis-hanson

 And, contemplating Afghanistan . . . .

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/2011/05/05/are_we_done_in_afghanistan

A mighty rebuttal to "strong horses" and "paper tigers"-not always what they seem . . . .

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/266437/osama-s-death-great-victory-us-conrad-black