In fact, we might ask the same question about the murder of Osama Bin Laden. Notice I use the term “murder.” When heavily armed elite troops capture a suspect, unarmed and defenseless, accompanied by his wives, and then shoot him, kill him, and dump his body into the ocean without an autopsy, that's sheer assassination. Also notice that I said “suspect.” The reason is because of another principle of law, that also goes back to the 13th century -- that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Before that, he's a suspect.
In the case of Osama Bin Laden, the United States had never formally charged him with 9/11 and part of the reason was that they didn't know that he was responsible. In fact, eight months after 9/11 and after the most intensive inquiry in history, the FBI explained that it suspected that the 9/11 plot was hatched in Afghanistan (didn't mention Bin Laden), and was implemented in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and of course, the United States. That's eight months after the attack and there's nothing substantive that they've learned since then that does more than increase the suspicion.
My own assumption is that the suspicion is almost certainly correct, but there's a big difference between having a very confident belief and showing someone to be guilty. And even if he's guilty, he was supposed to be apprehended and brought before a court. That's British and American law going back eight centuries. He's not supposed to be murdered and have his body dumped without an autopsy, but support for this is very nearly universal. Actually, I wrote one of the few critical articles on it and my article was bitterly condemned by commentators across the spectrum, including the Left, because the assassination was so obviously just, since we suspected him of committing a crime against us. And that tells you something about the significant, I would say “moral degeneration,” running throughout the whole intellectual class. And yes, Obama has continued this and in some respects extended it, but it hardly comes as a surprise.
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