Unseemly.

That’s the word that keeps coming to mind.

I understand the psychology – the appeal of putting the responsibility for heinous actions onto one (or more) specific human faces, so that if these individuals are killed, we can feel that justice is done and a threat is removed, much more so than if the responsibility is attributed to a system or a situation. And I agree that this one individual appears to have been a particularly malignant human being, both for the West and for Islamic societies.

However. If we’re talking about a clash of cultures, if we want to show the rest of the world that the West has superior ways and values, do we not then insist on solving our problems in ways that demonstrate this superiority? Do we not want our justice to come from due process? If we believe that this man’s recourse to violence was evil, do we not want to show that our own violence is tempered by the rule of law?

And on the other hand, if we believe that the emotional side of justice is best served through vengeance, would not the humiliation of capture and its resulting indignities have been a much more satisfying punishment for this proud man than a swift death? Did not Hitler fear capture much more than death?

I tell myself that sending in an elite squad to assassinate a monstrous person may have spared more of our soldiers than capturing him would have done, but I don’t know if that’s true or only plausible. I do know that, like daysprings, I have certainly found it awkward to explain to a child why good people can rejoice in the death of a human being.