Remember when Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan? Many people asked the question about whether or not his killing, clearly ordered at the highest levels, was keeping in the laws of war. I am not a lawyer, and this post should not be taken as legal advice by the handful of people who will ever be in this situation, but the answer is that it was. Why do I believe that?
First off, this was not the first time that the US had specifically targeted an enemy leader in war. Fidel Castro aside, the US killed Isoroku Yamamoto during World War II by deliberately shooting down a plane transporting him. The British assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in cooperation with Czech partisans during World War II as well.
Why were these killings permissible? While neither Yamamoto nor Heydrich were active in hostilities at the moment they were killed, they were commanders who were actively engaged in the war effort. Clearly part of the uniformed military, both of them were planning attacks, and so was bin Laden.
And was there a war in which Osama bin Laden was a commander? Yes: right after 9/11 the Congress authorized the use of military force against those who planned the attacks. Osama bin Laden was always a military target: the real surprise isn't that he got killed, but that very few of the critics of the recent action realized this earlier.
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