an autodidact meets a dilettante…

Usually it’s capture or kill, but in the case of the new al-Qaeda leader, US authorities are promising both.
It sounds like election speech rather than hate speech, but it’s coming from one Mike Mullen, an admiral and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don’t how prompted he was by his political overlords. Yes I know it’s a response to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s recent holy-war-as-usual announcement, and so would be defended as a tit for tat statement in ye olde war against terror, but the point is probably [and why should I get all worked up about it – every world-dominant state in history has acted this way] that the US doesn’t feel it needs to defend itself against anyone, that it’s beholden to nobody and can kill its enemies outright if it so desires.
The ‘capture and kill’ phrase is interesting though. You’d think that if they could capture Zawahiri, then they wouldn’t have to kill him, they could just trot him off to prison to await judgement. Aren’t these people first and foremost criminals? I’ve always argued this. Killing people, and incitement to killing people, these are crimes, and should be dealt with as crimes. Instead, the US seems to want to raise these people’s status to holy warriors, enemy combatants. Yes, maybe they feel this ‘permits’ them to slaughter Zawahiri et al on the battlefield [the extent of that battlefield being the known universe, apparently], but it surely distracts attention from them as criminals. What really gripes me isn’t the US tough talk, which is unsurprising, but the non-response [as far as I can see] from those [such as Australia’s diplomats] who might be influential. Something like, ‘Oh, I say, steady on old chap. Rule of law and all that, you know. Mustn’t let em think we’re as barbaric as they are. What?’