Was Obama right to storm bin Laden's compound without working with Pakistan?

Once again President Obama followed President Bush "You are for us or you are against us". The choose to be against helping us capture OBL so the President did the right thing and took the fight into their backyard. In the war on terror you are either with us or against us. I am sure that the government has talked to Pakistan about helping in the hunt for OBL and we saw the help they gave us. They had a chance on more than one occasion to show their true colors and we saw where they stood.

I do not believe that the US flew deep into Pakistan without knowledge of Pakistan government. Pakistani civilians saw aircrafts and watched (without knowing intention, seeing Osama's compound was very close to Pakistani military base). This is what I think happened: The Pakistan government was coerced into turning in Osama bin Laden after US denied promised aid. Pakistan badly needs money and US threatened to withhold aid, demanding Pakistan allow US in to get Osama. Pakistan pretends not to know about US raid, and US flows in and kills Osama bin Laden or his imposter. While US is announcing it will not give promised aid to Pakistan if found Pakistan knew about Osama's hideout, Pakistan will get US 25 million dollars reward money on Osama from US. Do not forget that the US and Pakistan knew of whereabouts of Osama. And the Navy SEALs now hailed, have always been and had no just cause to kill unarmed Osama (whose remains they quickly and conveniently buried at sea)! It is all a game! What just happened regarding Osama bin Laden is nothing but the setting of the stage for hopeful Obama 2012 win!

I agree that alerting Pakistan would have most likely alerted Bin Laden. Either way, the job is done.

Was it a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty? Absolutely! Was it the right thing to do? That's debatable, but I say YES! When we make decisions, we have to take the benefits and consequences into consideration. We often choose to do things that will bring on severe consequences, because we either think we'll get away with it, or we think the benefits outweigh the consequences. I think the best decision was made, in the context of the specific mission. If it wasn't such a surgical operation, I might think differently though. No one that even could have been injured in this op can claim any kind of innocence. They were all involved in hiding Bin Laden. Now it is up to Pakistan to decide what to do about this violation. We'll see what kind of "ally" they want to be.

If the States had worked with Pakistan, to be sure, some of them would have gone over to the compound and told Usama "Hey you better get out of here, there are some Navy Seals who are planning a raid." It is obvious that Pakistan was in cahoots with tBin Laden, because the compound was near a military base and they would not have allowed anyone there unless there was cooperation.

Taskr36, Let me say that President Obama is 101% right to call for this ground operation to take out this Al-Qaeda leader. It is already indicative just how Pakistan had been grossly incompetent with their own national security and no offense, when even their own leaders could be assassinated time and again - the latest being Mrs Bhutto. Sorry, I cannot support a country that could allow their leaders to be assassinated under broad daylight. Then, the eventful Mumbai attack by terrorists cells commencing again, from Pakistan. Not forgetting, that these attackers were actually trained and operating in Pakistan. It was just an unbelievable circus when the world's intelligence agencies had terrorists training camps in their own backyard and yet, they could blatantly deny it. With this execution I believe we all can see just what kind of an ally the US and British are having. Makes me question if all of us are being taken for a fool and made an A$$ by such a country who is ever begging for assistance and compassion. And played us outright at the end of the day by harboring such a notorious characters in their midst. There are really other lessons from this episode as well, concerning how we should fight against terrorism. For one, TRUST NO ONE as in this case, even the British considering the shoddy deals they had done, where I have to shake my head with disgust. Had the British be included in the ops, I wouldn't wonder if the mission took a turn for the worse and who the whistle blower might be even. At the end of the day, I am wondering why we are all supporting and worse weaponizing countries like Pakistan. Just leave them to fight it out on their own instead of wasting money and vital resources on these terror sentimentalists.

I have to agree with you 100%. IMO There is no way that OBL could stay smack dab in the middle of a million dollar complex (fort) without some on in Pakistan being aware. This place was built like fortress obviously to hide or protect someone important, surely that would make people very curious.

I think Pakistan probably was helping him the whole time and would have helped him if they had known.

I think it was the right move to get into Bin Laden's compound without informing Pakistan. Bin Laden had been living like a king in a huge compound just few miles from Pakistan Police. I don't know if Pakistan had been helping Laden hide in their country, but i am sure if Pakistan had known about this raid, Bin Laden would have escaped this time too. But it is great that the mission was successful and Laden, who had been hiding from past decade is finally killed!

Name a country, and I will say YES! There is one thing that will always defeat Pakistan's argument: the fact that Osama Bin Laden was there. We found him. So Pakistan can protest all it wants, but in doing so it will only look like a bogus ally. Now, had we done this and turned up empty handed, we would have invaded a country, crossed into its borders under false pretenses, and would look like a hypocrit in the eyes of the world. Fortunately, America doesn't do that...unless it is an oil rich nation we fought before and we can claim weapons of mass destruction which were never, ever found. In that case we will ignore the United Nations and skip right to a second war. But in this case, we had good intell and the right to do it. The world has one less purely evil mastermind, and is better for it. Some call it revenge, but I call it justice.