Of course it was legal to kill OBL

There is something bizarre in the buzz about whether it was legal to kill Osama bin Laden.

This was not an "assassination" akin to the (failed) efforts in the 1960s to off Fidel Castro. No one was trying to take out an elected, or unelected, politician.  Osama bin Laden was an enemy combatant who had openly taken "credit" for organizing the murder of more than 3000 Americans, not to mention hundreds more in other attacks and large scale killing of other nationals. He had declared he wanted to get nuclear weapons and use them.  He was planning to kill more.

As for legal niceties, Congress passed an act shortly after the 9/11 attacks called the Authorization for Use of Military Force" that let the president use "all necessary and appropriate force" against nations, organizations or persons determined to have aided in the 2001 attacks, in the name of self-defense.

So how can anyone doubt Obama's right to dispatch a team to kill the world's most prominent terrorist leader. As to whether he was armed or not, in the split-seconds available to decide whether he was a danger, the Seals were right to take no chances.

Nor would it bother me if that decision were made beforehand.  A Bin Laden imprisoned would have inspired more terrorist attacks and kidnapping of Americans to try to get him ransomed.  Any open trial would have been a circus.  A Bin Laden jailed for life would have remained an inspiration for Islamists.

The global war on terrorism may have been misnamed, but there was, and is, a global struggle against Islamist terrorists who want to strike out at the United States, Europe, and Muslim countries whose leaders they dislike. Bin Laden was the paramount leader of such killers. There should be no more question about taking him out than there would about shooting a big Mexican drug dealer.

He was a master criminal, and Islamist mafioso. He was caught and killed. Full stop.