A comparison in method
But not in an ideological sense. Assuredly, the death of America's most wanted is a boost to a population demoralized by continuous economic downturn and what appears to be a hollowing out of the State's responsibility to its citizens. The death of Bin Laden, celebrated across America, brings to a close a chapter in what is now an ever present War on Terror. There is no doubt the war will continue but it will now be relegated to the background until the next terrible terrorist attack.
What concerns me is the demonstration of the unilateral action taken by the US to kill. Even if that killing is, in some sense, justified. I have no doubt that were it possible Stalin or Hitler would've gone the same way, even if the circumstances were a bit different. But that is another essay or train of thought, a much longer one dealing with the moral high ground and sovereignty of States and foreign relations.
Maybe you have heard of a technological capability dubbed 'Prompt Global Strike' which is being developed under the auspice of the USAF. It's on wikipedia, you can look it up. But why is research being done on that when it has been clearly demonstrated the success of a special ops team to perform a much more surgical excision of a high value target? The literature written so far about the Bin Laden killing (It is an assassination, but no one is calling it that.) shows that the team sent adhered to a developed plan and trained to perform their mission. And aside from that, there is already existing capability to attack targets without the risk of personnel in drones and cruise missiles that can be readily deployed.
The developments in military technology has stopped being about the bigger bang, as humans have already developed a weapon capable of destroying civilization. Instead it has had two objectives: to disable the opponents ability to fight, and to minimize casualties for the allied side.
What 'Prompt Global Strike' does, once it is popularized and demonstrated would serve both these objectives. But it has a third ability: it is a weapon of terror. The capability to hit any target anywhere within a reasonable time frame (In our global networked world, what once took months now can be done in seconds.) hangs a sword of Damocles over the heads of any state or non-state actor.
Again I wonder why such a capability is being developed when it is clear a combination of existing technologies would perform the same function. What would such a system look like? And what would the vulnerabilities be? Why would the United States, in the middle of such financial difficulties, pursue such a strategy? Would such a system, if demonstrated, have been useful against someone like Bin Laden? Such a high technology approach surely could not be pursued for the asymmetric warfare the United States is currently engaged in, so what is it for?
I fear such a capacity. I don't know if the development of this technology would add or subtract from peace around the world. I understand the value of pure research. It was pure research that gave us the laser and the internet. These technologies were initially developed without set applications and grew to become the basis of our modern world. 'Prompt Global Strike' is a narrow capability that builds on existing technology applying existing technologies to terrorize the enemies of the United States. It will not have wide application even if it may turn out to have a separate humanitarian function (delivering needed food aid to hard to reach targets for instance) The world has seen unilateral action from the United States against one target. When such actions do not entail any risk (of property or lives) what prevents abuse?
There are many concerns when allocating defense spending. Perhaps I'll end with this classic anonymous quote, "The world will be right when schools get billions in funding and the military needs to hold bake sales."