The Spectactor's Notes

The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. And a good thing too, in the circumstances. But it is fascinating how little protest there has been from the people who are usually noisiest about any infringements of international law, and of human rights as currently interpreted. This must be because the perpetrator is Barack Obama. He has behaved exactly as George W. Bush would have done — ruthlessly, violently and unilaterally — but without the odium from the BBC, Channel 4, the Liberal Democrats etc etc which Mr Bush would have attracted. There was a theory, shorthanded as ‘Nixon Goes To China’, that only the right could do a deal with the communist world.