Now we have it, the ultimate test of whether or not you believe in capital punishment. If US special forces could safely get their hands on Osama bin Laden, should they arrest him, take him to the US and try him? Or should they kill him in his tent? (And maybe bump off those around him, just to make sure there are no heirs.)
After all, if they take him into custody, would he not become a lure for hostage-takers and for every sort of fundamentalist moron who would burn down kindergartens to set him free? But even if he were to be arrested and tried, would it be right or just for him to be executed by due and judicial process? We in Europe are against capital punishment, are we not?
So ask the other question. Would it be right if he weren't executed? What justice is there in allowing the man who commissions the murder of 6,000 people to live the rest of his days in a warm cell, with regular meals, a comfortable bed and a roof over his head? In our heart of hearts, almost all of us reserve the morality of capital punishment for a few chosen individuals.
Saddam Hussein
At the global level, who among us would not have been quite happy to see Saddam Hussein being sent off for an early tea? Wouldn't the world have been a happier place if Pol Pot had taken an early hike to the pavilion, having been neatly bowled between the eyes by a 5.56mm soft-nosed googly? Yes, you say, but a policy of assassination doesn't stop with one person; soon you have a shoot-to-kill policy which bumps off people for littering or not parking within the straight lines.
It is a fair objection. But the point is this: if we could be sure that state killing was limited, focused, and non-contagious, is it not tempting? In the case of Osama bin Laden, it is not merely tempting. For to take him alive presents his captors with the impossible task of keeping him in the face of terrorists who, as we know, will stop at absolutely nothing. So he cannot be captured. There is no choice. In fact, to capture him might be the very worst outcome of all the wretched variety of choices which civilisation has before it.
And if you have the moral and intellectual apparatus to deal with the implications of opting for killing someone when you could capture him, how far are you able to pursue the point? Because it's an uncomfortable topic, one that leads to difficult questions and even more difficult answers.
Let's start at home. If this state had been able to arrange for a group of Rangers to shoot Dessie O'Hare, the terrorist murderer and mutilator, who would have said this was wrong? He was widely perceived to be an unmanageable menace to the State, to the order of the State, and the rule of law of the State. I doubt very much if the State would, if given the choice, not have preferred to have his loved ones visit him at Glasnevin Cemetery every Sunday afternoon rather than at Portlaoise. That's what I think - and frankly, my dears, I wouldn't have given a damn if the State had so arranged it.
Lennie Murphy
What was most people's reaction when Lennie Murphy was murdered by the IRA? I'll tell you what mine was: Nice job, chaps. Never mind that the Provisional IRA helped create the moral circumstances which enabled Murphy to go on his murderous rampage. There are always contexts for every deed. So "the context" is assumed. Given that assumption, and loathing the IRA as I do, I still say: Nice job, chaps (using those words just to get up their noses, and to remind them whose side I'm on).
Murphy was a sadistic monster, a killer who killed when at large and killed when in jail and to whom murder seemed a natural resolution to any problem. He was possessed, and in his possession caused others to behave like him. Not a soul in the RUC or the British Army lamented his passing. There was not even a proper investigation into his death - just a silent, consensual sigh: Nice job, chaps.
So if we admit there are circumstances where it is right to take individual life, when is it wrong? I ask as someone who has always been opposed to capital punishment and who now recognises that if we make exceptions, where do the exceptions stop?
Why should a serial paederast rapist and killer, for whom there is compelling DNA evidence of guilt, be allowed to live? What is the logic which permits the lawful killing of terrorists in certain circumstances, but not of such a man? Or would we prefer the intellectual fudge which stops us asking questions that challenge liberal orthodoxies when the latter are inconveniently contradictory? The fudge is a favoured position of liberals, the one they return to whenever the logical going gets rough.
Moral coherence
But the central problem isn't simply the contradictions within liberalism, but the assumption that there should be an intellectual and moral coherence to all our actions. This has been a central conceit of Western culture since the French Revolution. Maybe it is vain to make all our actions and theories dovetail into a perfect moral consistency. And maybe that vanity is yet another victim of September 11th, the day when US - and therefore Western - culture changed for ever.