At approximately 11:35 p.m. on May 1, speaking from the East Room of the White House, President Obama announced “to the American people and the world” that “justice has been done,” that he had personally “authorized an operation to get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice.”

Two days later, in an article posted on opendemocracy.net, Daniele Archibugi asked if we have lost something by not putting Bin Laden on trial. Indeed, his execution raises critical questions about what justice is for.

Obama used the word ‘justice’ several times in his speech, but it is dangerous to confuse the death of Osama bin Laden with an act of justice—even if that act was justified.

Is the death of a defeated enemy a form of ‘justice’ or was the killing of Bin Laden an extra-judicial execution?

What counts as justice in any given context is directly related to the kinds of power operating in that context and how that power is rationalized. One form this takes is based on the myth of ‘victor’s justice’, which creates an image of a violent, fanatical, easily marginalized enemy that’s sharply contrasted with the rational, peace-making winner.

“We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda – an organization headed by Osama Bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe,” Obama declared in his speech. “And so we went to war against al-Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.”

The aim of the rhetoric here is two-fold: first, an attempt to reshape the concept of justice into one that condones a victor’s violent retribution by attaching it to the legitimizing myth of victimhood and, second, an effort to subordinate political order in favor of U.S. military power. Countries that have yet to remove the dangerous influence of religion from their political sphere are expected to understand that American secular justice is rational and peace-making, and that it must at times—regrettably, of course—resort to violence to bring criminals to justice.

Yet the question arises: Can the victor decide what is ‘justice’?

The myth of victor’s justice also provides Western governments with a stock enemy—the terrorist. As Danilo Zolo, an Italian philosopher of law, put it in La giustizia dei vincitori (Victors’ Justice) this is ‘tailor-made justice’ for the major Western powers who wage wars of aggression, which they justify as humanitarian or preventive wars against terrorism, with absolute impunity.

And Obama himself confirmed: “For over two decades, Bin Laden has been al-Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of Bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda.”

It is this binary construct, this division between good and evil, that continues to be a critical problem in contemporary politics. Especially in the U.S.

German political theorist Carl Schmitt may have been right when he said the friend-enemy dichotomy was essential to the creation of the political in the modern state. “Theologians,” Schmitt wrote, “tend to define the enemy as something that must be destroyed.”

The Obama doctrine, however, differs from this more ethical, theological formulation. Here the enemy is no longer seen as entering into war for immoral or unethical reasons, or because he is a barbarian, an infidel or a pirate. Instead, the enemy is seen as unfair in light of “the story of our history,” and the American “commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place,” as Obama remarked in his speech. For this reason, Obama claims that the enemy’s demise “should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

 Ironically, Obama’s policy of extra-judicial justice conflicts with the Nobel committee’s motivation for honoring him with the Nobel Peace Prize. According to the committee, Obama deserved the prize because “his diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes at are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

The capture and killing of the world’s most wanted terrorist and the illusion of having eliminated America’s number one enemy are not valid reasons to grant America hegemony on the world stage.

To Americans who asked after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?”—this is a primary reason why. Acting unilaterally, speaking on behalf of the rest of the world, assuming the right to exercise its own brand of justice as if it were universally recognized, a God-given right, not to mention declaring war on behalf of the victims of 9/11 despite its questionable justification create frustration and resentment the world over.

Countries who’ve assumed a global leadership position should not be allowed succumb to emotional justifications for their violent reprisals—and then call it ‘justice’. The capture and prosecution of Osama Bin Laden would have been a rare opportunity to reconsider recent history and the so-called “war on terror.” Instead, President Obama opted to repurpose a false dichotomy that divides again the world into good and evil.