MORE MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING

As one would expect, the contrarians are weighing in on the assassination of Osama bin Laden. As expected, Fidel Castro thinks it wrong and an unauthorized invasion of national sovereignty. Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, caught hell for saying it was a good thing from national newspaper, "Die Welt" and the German foreign minister, Guido Westewelle said we must be careful lest it send the wrong message to extremists to incite them. As if they needed further inciting! The prime minister of Spain, Juan Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, decried the killing and not bringing bin Laden to trial. Human rights lawyers all over the world are adding their fuel to the fire.

I am not one under normal circumstances to advocate violation of national sovereignty or assassinations. But would you consider "normal circumstances" the war on terror? Yes, note the word "war". Whether you like it or not we have been engaged for ten years in a war on terror. I am not saying we always did it the right way, for I have consistently thought, since the beginning, that Iraq was a mistake, that we could have undermined and forced Saddam Hussein out another way---but that's another story. In wartime civil rights and many democratic prerogatives are temporarily suspended.

Remember the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln, the epitome of the soul of democracy, suspended habeas corpus? The ground rules often change in wartime, and we are forced to do things we normally might find repellent. Harry Truman caught a lot of hell for dropping the atomic bomb, but, personally, I think he did the right thing. If you had been told by your trusted military advisers that the invasion of Japan would mean a million casualties, wouldn't you have considered the bomb?

We might also remember that Congress on September 18, 2001 passed the Authorization to Use Military Force, a broad measure giving sweeping power to the President to act with wartime powers against the extremist terrorists, especially bin Laden.

It's not a lovely abstract game played on a board or on paper, world politics and war. Do you think the Nazis or the Japanese in WW II played by the rules? The idea in a war is to win.

Osama bin Laden was another Hitler or Stalin; he was Public Enemy Number One and a threat to all democracies. He had to be taken out, and it took a helluva long time to do so. When we had the chance to do it---and it was a risky chance our President took, to his credit---, we had to strike. and that is how war works.

So, drop the Monday morning quarterbacking, and just appreciate an awful but necessary job that had to be done.