Was the Hit on Bin Laden Illegal?

WWII, the Allies waged war against a sovereign nation and finally enforced entry onto its territory. Isn'T this a violation of the sovereignity of said country that was minding just its own busioness and quarells with its immediate neighbours?

This might be true most times when dealing with a soveriegn nation state but it has zero applicability to extra-territorial terrorists. Terrorists bare no relation to countries however they do greatly resemble criminal organizations but instead of trading in illegal money, terrorists trade in violence.

Moral relativism aside sometimes violence is effective, might does make right and in any last-man-standing situation the resources of the focused and politically united nation state should be able to defeat terrorists with the application of law at home and controlled but appropraite firepower abroad.

Up to the adaption of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by the UN in the wake of the Rwanda genocide, the norms of international relations dating from the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia affirmed (in a rather broad nutshell) what happened inside a nations borders was the responsibility of that nation alone. R2P allowed intervention across national boundries to save life so the question then becomes, how many lives need to be lost before a cross-border intervention can occur.

What is the substantive difference between:

- a SEAL team violating national soveriegnty to kill somebody responsible for several thousand death and planning to murder several thousand more; or
- A full scale military intervention under R2P?

Which constiutes the greater violation?

You cannot have it both ways, R2P allows for ignoring international borders to save life, even if people get killed in the process. What happened in Abbottabad hopefully represents the new way of doing business with terrorist leaders.

The WW2 example is anyway badly flawed and does nothing to reinforce your arguement since being nice would never have made Hitler go away.

You cannot pay back violence for violence, by that you are not any better than the claimed aggressor is himself. Also, who is the aggressor really is a question of own position, I would say. One has to see things in relation a bit.

This would be nice if it applied in all cases but it does not. The controlled application of precision violence as seen May Day could very well render international terrorism much less effective in the future. Lt General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson is quoted as saying "Kill the officers and the cowards will run and take the brave men with them." Place the terrorist leadership and those nation states that shelter under notice; the new reality is that regardless where they might hide, they are the ones now living on a big bulls eye and nowhere is safe anymore. Eliminate the leaders in their presumed sanctuaries and over time the rest will become far less than effective.