Maureen Dowd's "Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil": We're Finally in Agreement

A hypothetical:

A small atomic bomb with a timing device is set to explode in Manhattan within an hour. There is no time to evacuate the island, and if the bomb goes off, at least a million people will die.

The person who planted the bomb has been apprehended. You read the person his/her Miranda warning, whereupon this person demands to see an attorney. What do you do? Are there indeed instances when the lives of a million people take precedence over the right to legal counsel?

In this same vein, Maureen Dowd today justifies the killing of Osama bin Laden in an op-ed in The New York Times entitled "Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/08dowd.html?_r=1&hp), and for once, we are in agreement. Deriding the usual cast of characters from the Left, who are busy bemoaning the fact that bin Laden was sentenced to death without a trial, Dowd writes:

"Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently.

President Obama was prepared to take a life not only to avenge American lives already taken but to deter the same killer from taking any more. Aside from Bin Laden’s plotting, his survival and his legend were inspirations for more murder.

. . . .

Morally and operationally, this was counterterrorism at its finest.

We have nothing to apologize for."

Exactly. The United States is at war with terror, and in a rare demonstration of courage, determination and cunning, America eliminated a monster intent on killing more innocent civilians and placed the world on notice that perpetrators of mass murder can hide, but they ultimately cannot escape justice.

Let's not mince words: The killing of bin Laden was a "targeted assassination", ordered by President Obama. The Left winces in disgust when they hear "targeted assassination", characteristically attributed to Israel in its war against Hamas, whose suicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in furtherance of its charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews.

Unfortunately, the war on terror - like the hypothetical atomic bomb in Manhattan - often leaves no choices, and if it is necessary to eliminate a mass murderer by means of targeted assassination, so be it.

I agree with Dowd that President Obama took enormous personal risk by sending Navy Seals to Abbottabad, instead of bombing bin Laden's hideout from the air, thereby saving the lives of children living in the complex, and Obama deserves our heartfelt gratitude for ridding the world of this fiend.