UBL’s Liability to Be Killed

Abstract

In this chapter the book returns to the specifics of the Osama bin Laden raid and investigates whether his case meets the conditions laid out earlier for the liability account of permissible harm. The case, as it turns out, is highly irregular because bin Laden’s threat was (primarily) indirectly imposed by the collective agency of al-Qaeda. Moreover, killing bin Laden on the liability account would be a kind of pre-emptive killing. These nonstandard features of the case make meeting the conditions for liability more difficult. However, this chapter argues that, first, these nonstandard aspects do not block liability in principle and that, second, the conditions for liability were in fact met in this case. This is demonstrated through the use of several thought experiments, designed to isolate the various moral aspects involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden.