executing Bin Laden may not be smart. It ... may well make him a martyr

Could be, Clint, but I'm not sure for one reason:

Of all the Nazi leaders who have died, committed suicide, been sentenced to death, or sentenced to less than death, or even acquitted at Nuremberg, there is one single man whose grave has become the focus of Neonazi pilgrimages and at whose birthday they try a show of strength (very few, I'm glad to say) in memory demonstrations. That is the only one who got a life sentence (and lived in jail well within his nineties): Rudolf Hess. "Free Rudolf Hess" was for them a rally cry, making an impression on some especially after he was ninety.

Well, that's just only a single example (I have no other) and the circumstances may have been special. But I always have that example in my mind, when I read the martyr argument. The over ninety old frail and weak wreck of a man who was held in solitary confinement for the last 20 years or so was better for Neonazi propaganda than a dead Hess could have been.

But what is better in terms of propaganda can neither be an argument for nor against capital punishment.

Wolfgang