In his statement last night on the death of Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama said that justice had been done. You'll find this being questioned round and about the internet. I'm not sure why. That killing Bin Laden was part of no judicial process is pretty obvious, of course, so this wasn't an act of legal justice in which the world's most famous terrorist received due process. It seems equally obvious, however, that he was killed as an enemy in war - the war in question being the war on terror - and that since he was a major enemy protagonist, the Obama administration didn't believe he was owed due process.
At the same time, President Obama is right in saying that justice has been done. Bin Laden was a prime architect of mass murder and his being dispatched in the way he was has been greeted by people all over the world today as a just act - a just act in a broader moral sense. The puzzle to me is provided by those whose minds are closed to this other side of things.
