A very intelligent discussion about the current security crisis facing the United States, and not just the United States, focused on the extent to which we and other civilized countries we now find ourselves at war - and if indeed we are at war, what constraints do the precepts of natural justice and sound international jurisprudence impose on the punitive military actions that our government, perhaps aided by its allies, is currently contemplating. This seems clear and incontrovertible: our immediate enemy (I ignore here those states that, directly or indirectly, sponsor terrorism) is not a sovereign political state, existing within defined territorial boundaries and composed of combatants and non-combatants. This is an international terrorist network, a private army, which has already declared war on the United States, and not only on the United States, and which has already, with all the evidence, demonstrated its determination to declare war, not only on the political regime American, but on American citizens and public officials at home and abroad. Any lingering doubts, especially in the Islamic world, that the Al Qaeda network and its recognized leader, Osama bin Laden, were directly responsible for the atrocities of 9/11 should have been removed by now with the consent of the Government of Pakistan in this. judgment. Al Qaeda is not a political state, but it is certainly a gang of pathological outlaws; and, it should be noted, Al Qaeda is not waging war in the strict sense: by its direct, deliberate and intentional elimination of the lives of non-combatants, it is rather engaging in a systematic campaign of wanton killing against, at least, anyone who happens to to possess an American passport. The... middle of the paper... facing another consideration. That terrorists, particularly terrorist leaders, in prison pose an ongoing threat to our society that ordinary criminals, including organized crime family heads, do not. It is easy for us to imagine the kind of atrocities, now for the purpose of extorting the release of Bin Laden or others from our government, that members of Al Qaeda still at large might carry out to free him. Therefore, there seems to be a strong argument, even for those of us who think that the state is justified in administering capital punishment only in those now virtually non-existent cases where state self-defense requires it, that this could be a of these extremely unlikely cases. If this were the case, the execution of Bin Laden and his collaborators would not be an act of cowboy revenge, but the fulfillment of a heavy moral obligation on the part of the State..