As the details of the Navy SEAL Team 6 operation to terminate Bin Laden become clearer, it has become increasingly apparent the U.S. Commander-in-Chief had authorized an execution order. In other words, there was never any intention to capture OBL, so as to allow him his day in court, and I don’t have a problem with this whatsoever. So listen up, hippies, and let me explain why. (P.S: I’m somewhat of a hippy)
Now if, in this instance, the White House favored capture over assassination, then they could’ve done so easily. After all, by the time the special operators had reached the third level of the compound, they had eliminated all threats, only to find an unarmed Bin Laden and one of his wives. The wife ran towards the SEALS and they disabled her with a solitary rifle shot to her right leg. However, Bin Laden, who had remained motionless during this time, was terminated with a “double tap” to the chest and head. Fantastic! A flawless mission completed. High-fives all round!
Well, flawless that is unless you’re a member of the international law allows for no nuance crowd, a law that mandates that an unarmed individual must be captured or given an opportunity to surrender. Australian born human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC was the first and most vocal critic of President Obama’s definition of justice:
America resembles the land of the munchkins, as it celebrates the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. The joy is understandable, but in some respects, unattractive. It endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”. Amoral diplomats and triumphant politicians join in applauding Bin Laden’s summary execution because they claim real justice – arrest, trial and sentence would have been too difficult in the case of Bin Laden. But in the long-term interests of a better world, should it not at least have been attempted?
Ok, so we’re on the same page here. I am a firm opponent of the death penalty. (I will leave my reasons for another day, but know that I object to state sponsored executions in principle) So I have no doubt I’m setting myself up for calls of, “HYPOCRITE”, but here me out. Osama Bin Laden was an unlawful enemy combatant and Al Qaeda pose an asymmetric threat to the U.S. and its Western allies. (Notwithstanding the fact Al Qaeda have murdered more Muslims than any other group) In other words, capturing, say, Saddam Hussein and bringing OBL to justice via due process is not one and the same thing.
When the former dictator of Iraq was tried for international crimes against humanity, his incoherent rants and idiotic diatribes from the dock were largely ignored and ridiculed by all people outside of a few of his closest followers, who all happened to be Iraqis within Iraq. In regards to Bin Laden, his followers are spread throughout all corners of the globe, and Al Qaeda and their unknown number of lone wolf operatives are willing to kill and die on any single word their beloved leader mutters.
I’ve heard others use the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazis as the model for bringing our enemies to justice, but this is a flawed analogy as Nazism died when Russian tanks rolled through the streets of Berlin.
This is where I believe the Administration learned their lesson from Indonesia. In 2002, Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda franchise, detonated a car bomb that killed 202 Westerners in a Bali nightclub. After months of painstaking police work, the perpetrators were captured and brought to trial. What followed was a nine-month media circus that gave the condemned men endless opportunities to chant their anti-Western rhetoric, thus helping inspire and recruit a swathe of new terrorist inductees. Moreover, the protracted trial and execution of the bombers rallied sympathy for the men throughout S.E Asia, and opinion polls measured across this time period reflect this.
With further attacks in the years 2003 to 2009, Indonesian authorities learned a valuable lesson from the 2002 Sari Club bomb. Although not stated outright publicly, the Indonesian counter-terrorism forces no longer bring known Jemaah Islamiyah leadership to trial. They’re killed where they’re found, as was the case with the three most senior figures, who were all killed in separate actions, including Azahari Husin, Noordin Top, and Dulmatin.
Of particular interest was the killing of Noordin Top, who was Bin Laden’s equivalent in S.E Asia. His death dominated the newswires for five to ten days, and then he was forgotten. Literally, he went from public enemy number one to a historical footnote within a moment’s breath, and I suspect this will shortly be the case for OBL, too.
CJ Werleman
Author ‘God Hates You. Hate Him Back’ and ‘Jesus Lied. He Was Only Human’
www.cjwerleman.com
