Osama bin Laden was “murdered,” journalist Chris Hedges tells Eliot Spitzer

On “In the Arena” tonight, war correspondent and divinity scholar Chris Hedges, Yale Law Professor Stephen L. Carter and host Eliot Spitzer debated the morality of killing Osama bin Laden.

“We are ceding to the president the authority to decide who should be killed…that is at least something we should talk about and think about very hard,” Stephen L. Carter, Yale Law Professor.  Carter says that the killing of bin Laden was justified since he was the leader of a “belligerent force.”

Hedges says that when he covered al Qaeda for The New York Times, Osama bin Laden was not involved in day-to-day operations within al Qaeda and that since bin Laden has been suggested to be unarmed at the time of his death, that his death was as the result of an act of “murder.”  Hedges describes al Qaeda as “largely broken and disrupted” even before the killing of bin Laden, and warns that the military occupations in the Middle East continue to fuel anger and terrorism against the U.S.

In the Arena airs weeknights at 8:00pm ET on CNN.