Obama kills Osama: An EU perspective

Well, where is the problem? There is one. In fact, there are two. First, it is a legitimate question whether a person of Christian belief may at all be “happy” about the death of any human being. And second, is a state government allowed to eliminate any human being through cold-blooded murder? 

Depending on the political position one might argue that the Europeans are far too sissy. Or that the Americans are far less European than they think, basically still just being cowboys without any rule of law. But if we dig deeper, there is a lot more which needs to be seen. A democratic state is bound by the rule of law and by international law. One of the basic principles of its foundation is that it does not lower its standards to the ones of its enemies. If it does so, such state loses its democratic values and reliability. In short, the rule of law comes to an end. And the state itself does as well as a result.

Under a properly functioning rule of law system, Bin Laden should have been taken prisoner and put on trial in a US court, better even in the international court of justice in The Hague. But Bin Laden was shot. He had not been killed by accident, not in self-defense and not as a collateral damage. It was a targeted killing, a hit job by a government. Without any court trial and conviction. This is murder and a violation of international law.

Of course, Israel is doing that all the time: Sending out the Mossad to kill its political enemies or terrorists. And of course this is by any standards illegal and unacceptable. But Israel is not a world power. The US is. Now, what if the USA start to behave like that? And what, if others follow? 

This brings us to the second aspect, which put so much pressure on Merkel. Religion. On what basis can Western democracies ask China to respect human rights, ask African dictators not to kill their opponents and ask Islamic countries not to apply the cruel sharia in a modern world – if at the same time those Western democracies live on the same cruel principles of the Bible’s Old Testament, demanding “an eye for an eye”, while officially claiming to live on the Christian principles of love, laid down in the New Testament?

America is proud of its democratic principles and its belief in God. The killing of Bin Laden violated both. Don’t go down that road, America. Europeans know what they are talking about: This road led us into two World Wars.

Dr. Andreas Geiger is Managing Partner of Alber & Geiger, a leading EU government relations law firm in Brussels.