Abstract
The book now turns to the details of the Osama bin Laden case itself. His life and relevant background details are reviewed, particularly his role in the formation in, and, at the time of his death, his on-going leadership of al-Qaeda. After establishing his background culpability for unjust threats, the raid undertaken by the United States to kill bin Laden is carefully reviewed in detail. The various discrepancies about the raid from among the competing accounts are canvassed and discussed. The resulting picture of the event that we can have the most confidence in is presented, with the aim of including all morally relevant details that could pertain to the possibility of bin Laden’s liability.
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Notes
Michael Scheuer, Osama bin Laden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Fouad Hussein, Al Zarqawi: al Qaeda’s Second Generation, serialized in Al-Quds al-Arabi, May, 2005;
Jean-Charles Brisard, Zarqawi: the New Face of al-Qaeda (New York: Other Press, 2005).
Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2010). I will often use “civilian” or “innocents” as alternative terms for “nonliable” people throughout this book. This is not meant to thereby imply that all civilians are innocent or that all civilians are necessarily nonliable.
For a discussion of how people are recruited and convinced to become suicide bombers, including discussion of a1-Qaeda bombers under UBI’s influence, see Ariel Merari, Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Also see
Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005).
Nicholas Schmidle, “Getting bin Laden: What Happened that Night in Abbottabad,” The New Yorker, August 8, 2011. Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden (New York: Dutten Adult, 2012).
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© 2014 Bradley Jay Strawser
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Strawser, B.J. (2014). The Case of Osama bin Laden. In: Killing bin Laden: A Moral Analysis. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137434937_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137434937_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49458-3
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