Obama Gets His Man
I have listened with incredulity to the celebrations and claims that justice has been done. What did Barack Obama accomplish by killing Osama bin Laden? To say that justice has been done is to smugly ignore all the reasons the man had a following. Muslims have legitimate grievances against the corporate empire. President Obama thinks killing in the name of crushing al Qaeda is justified because they are at war with the corporate empire. Who has killed more innocent civilians in that war? Ah, that question is not up for discussion, because the answer does not speak well for US pretensions to the moral high ground.
As usual, whatever the empire does in what it calls self-defense is automatically moral and justified, whereas whatever an enemy does in response is automatically immoral and unjustifiable. This double standard may seem perfectly logical to apologists for the empire, but it cannot change the fact that this adventure violated Pakistani sovereignty and international law. Obama said during his triumphal announcement:
…we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was.
It is amazing how US politicians can say such things with a straight face. Is USA not directly responsible for over a million dead Iraqis, most of them civilians? If Afghanistan were not so sparsely populated, its death toll would probably be comparable. Rewriting history is a common practice of politicians. Obama may not want people to remember this, from one of his debates with John McCain:
Nobody talked about attacking Pakistan. Here’s what I said.
And if John wants to disagree with this, he can let me know, that, if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.
The preliminary news reports state that Pakistan was not even informed of the plan. People may think this is nitpicking, or that informing Pakistan would have put the plan at risk, since bin Laden obviously had friends there and might have been tipped off, but Obama had made that qualification for a reason. If Pakistan were unable or unwilling to act, there might be a case that invading its territory is not a violation of international law. Otherwise there can be no case; the drone strikes and this operation were aggressive acts against a sovereign nation, extrajudicial killings without a trial that are supposedly acts of self-defense.
It might be arguable that this operation was self-defense, if it really would bring an end to the war on terror, but all it has done is make a martyr of bin Laden. A leaderless group that wants revenge for the death of their martyred leader may be far more dangerous than before. Bin Laden may end up being seen in retrospect as a restraining figure on the mayhem that is now likely to break out. Under his leadership, most of the attacks were planned and coordinated. Without a leader, al Qaeda may feel it is open season to attack Western targets in myriads of ways that do not require planning or coordination. Needless to say, negotiating an end to the conflict has been made well-nigh impossible. People may think it was impossible before, but if USA had given a hearing to the legitimate grievances of Muslims, and been willing to negotiate in good faith to deal with those grievances, there could have been a chance. Bin Laden used to be an ally, and if he could have been satisfied that USA was willing to change its ways, he could have persuaded his followers to put an end to this war. Now there is nobody of his stature to play that role.
Congratulations, President Obama. The war on terror was already unwinnable; now it may well be impossible to negotiate an end to it. The empire will fall, and by that time, history may not agree with his assessment that this was a good day for USA, or the world. Revenge may feel good, but it rarely if ever helps bring an end to a war. Why would the President not seize this moment to declare victory and an end to the war on terror? Because he recognizes the threat has not been lessened. What he refuses to recognize is that the threat will never be lessened by military means, so if this could not be an opportunity to end the war on terror, there will never be a better one. It is impossible for military might to crush a resistance movement with legitimate grievances, because the actions taken to crush it constantly create more enemies and fiercer enmity.
Obama hopes this killing will intimidate and demoralize these enemies. This is a peculiar failing of reasoning based on the fragile male ego, as if this great victory will teach these enemies a lesson about what will happen to those who dare mess with USA. Fear does not quell the will to exact revenge. There is plenty of racist reasoning as well swirling around the rationale of the war on terror. Kola Boof, a Sudanese womanist who claims to have been a mistress of Osama bin Laden, told an amazing tale of how her story was disbelieved and attacked by whites.
In 2002 when the London Guardian newspaper outed my forced sexual relationship with terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the American media initially had no problem with revelations that Somi kept an Egyptian-Sudanese mistress in Morocco in 1996. My birth name, Naima Bint Harith, summoned visions of an Arab-raised aristocrat who they assumed would look like Cher. When they found out I was not only Black—but looked fully Black—and that I’d been adopted and raised by Black Americans in the United States and returned as an adult to North Africa as a model-actress, they immediately announced that I was less attractive than Prince Charles’ mistress Camilla Parker Bowles or President Clinton’s mistress Monica Lewinsky and that it couldn’t possibly be true.
Though I was featured in a two-part interview with MSNBC where I was billed as “Former Mistress of Osama Bin Laden,” and not alleged-former mistress, and was allowed to tell my story in my own words—Peter Bergen, supposedly the world’s preeminent Bin Laden expert, insisted I was making up the story and other American experts claimed that the billionaire “bin ladin” family had an upper class etiquette that would not allow an “overtly religious non-sexual” Arab Muslim Osama to have a Black mistress (yet two of Somi’s twenty-five children are black and his Syrian grandmother would be considered a Black woman in the United States). Connie Chung and her producers at CNN asked my lawyer point blank, “Why would a man of Bin Laden’s wealth and stature have a Black mistress?”
It was not without reason that bin Laden compared the war on terror to a Christian crusade. USA has no interest in understanding why he and his followers are willing to risk their lives to fight the empire. In the judgment of the empire, they are savages that must be crushed. There is no lack of racism underlying this war on terror. As half black, perhaps the President should know better, but whatever wisdom his mixed heritage may confer on him, he has suppressed it so well it might as well not exist.
Another example of racism was the claim that bin Laden was a coward, hiding behind one of his wives as a human shield. Reuters reported the White House has backed away from that story. One might wonder what was the purpose of spreading such a rumor. The spin machine never misses a chance to cast the enemies of empire as barbaric monsters.
Bin Laden resisted capture, using a woman thought to be one of his wives as a human shield as he fired back, several officials told reporters. Ultimately, he was shot in the head above the left eye and died almost immediately. (Reuters news service later reported that the White House was backing away from the story, with an unidentified official saying the woman was not his wife and was not used as a shield.)
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Today it comes out Osama bin Laden was unarmed, but allegedly made threatening moves, so he had to be shot. Give me a break. This is from an AP story at the Canadian Press
This makes no sense at all. What kind of resistance was seen as so threatening the SEALS felt they had to shoot to kill? Is the reason this information is not forthcoming because it is too embarrassing to admit the SEALS were trigger happy? This is justice? Many international leaders are stating they would have preferred to see bin Laden tried. This is from Reuters
Is it any wonder USA refuses the recognize the International Criminal Court? It would have to answer for its war crimes! Since Obama has steadfastly refused to prosecute officials of the previous Administration for their crimes, perhaps the ICC could step in to do the duty Obama is shirking. Obama will not allow that, because he is also guilty of war crimes.
This is from the Ben Smith blog at Politico
John Brennan apparently has no idea how ironic his words are. Just how false has the US narrative been over the years? If I had to say which narrative has more credibility, it would be a difficult choice, but I would say the narrative of bin Laden, while deplorable and sickening in many ways, has been far less disingenuous and hypocritical. He did not attempt to obfuscate his position, unlike Mr. Brennan and the whole political spin machine. The mainstream politicians and pundits are nearly unanimous in their praise for this “gutsy” operation, but then, USA has considered itself above the law for a very long time. American exceptionalism at work.
There can be no honor or justification for shooting an enemy leader in cold blood. There was evidently no reason bin Laden could not have been captured alive. Officials are trying to make it sound otherwise, because they know bin Laden was killed for no good reason. What kind of threatening move could this unarmed man possibly have made that made it necessary to shoot to kill? This was not a healthy man, and I severely doubt he was an accomplished martial artist, able to overpower Navy SEALS with his bare hands! No, the President wanted him dead, so he sent in professional killers. Brennan said the SEALS were “able and prepared” to “take bin Laden alive,” if the opportunity presented itself. It did, but they killed him anyway. Why? Did he know too much?
May 4th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Today the excuses for killing bin Laden were that the SEALS expected him to be wearing bombs, and that he may have been reaching for a nearby gun. The fact remains, if they really wanted to take him alive, they could have.
Not everyone in USA is gloating over this assassination. This is from an AP story at the Washington Examiner
Mr. Hannigan cannot imagine what could be celebrated, if not this? He needs to get a life! How about a birthday or holiday? Seriously, this article, and similar sentiments I have read, do give me some hope that the people of this nation are not all so bloodthirsty and vengeful as to think this assassination is something to celebrate. If bin Laden had been captured alive, even I might have celebrated, though I would still object to the violation of Pakistani sovereignty. Some are calling for Obama to withdraw from Afghanistan, or to speed up his timetable for getting out of there, but Obama will not change his strategy; he did this to convince people he deserves reelection, not to end the war on terror. The powers that be do not want to end that war; it serves their purposes and lines their pockets to keep it going.
May 9th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
The story gets stranger. A daughter of Osama bin Laden reportedly told Pakistani investigators he was captured alive, then executed in front of his family! This was from Al Arabiya, last Wednesday.
There is so much contradictory “information” swirling around this story, who knows what to believe. However, if this is true, it might explain why the Administration cannot seem to get its own story straight. Was there a firefight? Did the SEALs have any reason to kill bin Laden, besides revenge? If the “capture contingencies” that Reuters reports are accurate, this is another example of USA creating conditions of surrender they know are impossible, so the decision to go to war will seem unavoidable. This was also done to justify dropping the atom bombs on Japan, more recently the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Of course that was unlikely. That was the idea, to create a scenario so unlikely that the failure of bin Laden to surrender in such a way would be taken as a green light to kill him. It has been reported that bin Laden was not given enough time to say much of anything, and was a white flag supposed to be within his easy reach? No, Obama wanted bin Laden dead. Taking him alive and putting him on trial would have been messy, and Republicans might have tried to make a case that Obama sparing his life showed he was soft on terror. Not to mention the thorny question of jurisdiction; since bin Laden was wanted for terrorist acts in several nations, it would seem the proper venue would be the International Criminal Court, which USA refuses to recognize.
Interviewed on 60 Minutes, Obama stooped to the Robert Gibbs method of demeaning his critics. Gibbs said last August that people who say Obama is like George Bush “ought to be drug tested.” Obama said,
All criminals, even war criminals, deserve a fair trial. Obama, like Bush, thinks he is entitled to be judge, jury, and executioner of whoever is deemed an enemy of USA. I wonder if that prescription was a threat. After all, the Teen Screen program bribes teenagers to have their heads examined, and if they are found to be “abnormal,” they are prescribed drugs to correct their “problem.” Does Helmut Schmidt need to have his head examined? What about people who think the death penalty is immoral, or who object to the cold-blooded assassination of an unarmed defenseless enemy leader? Oh, it is argued the SEALs could not know he was defenseless, weapons were within easy reach and he could have been wired to blow himself or the building sky high. One can make all kinds of excuses for killing an unarmed enemy, but bottom line, justice was not done; that was revenge, pure and simple. If justice is to be reduced to revenge, no wonder men are perpetually at war. The cycle of revenge does not end when one side thinks it should.
This is from the Kansas City Star yesterday:
Uh huh. We need to shut up and move on, because the truth is that this raid was a violation of international law, and even accepting that USA had a right to conduct this raid, there was no need or justification to kill Osama bin Laden. That truth is too embarrassing, so people should just shut up about it.
Perhaps these statements by Obama and Kerry were in response to questions from abroad. This is from Reuters:
David Sirota wrote an article for Salon, calling for the release of the live feed, so the facts of what actually transpired can be known. Sirota takes apart the arguments that national security trumps the right of the people to know the truth, and lampoons the shifting story line which officials have shrouded in the “fog of war.”
Another peculiar angle of this story is a doctored photo published by the Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, removing Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason, on the grounds that
The editors go on to heatedly deny Judaism does not respect women.
I wonder what “discrimination” means to these clowns. Orthodox Judaism is as sexist as any fundamentalist religion, and do not get me started on the treatment of the Palestinians.
The propaganda machine is swinging into high gear, with the release of the bin Laden “home videos,” which are meant to cast bin Laden as a pathetic old man obsessed with his image. I think US officials are projecting their image obsession on bin Laden, and their attempts to portray bin Laden this way are pathetic. If this is hoped to demoralize his followers, it is far more likely to have the opposite effect. Obama says we do not need to “spike the football.” How can he say such things with a straight face? What kind of message does he think this propaganda effort is sending?
May 12th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
More nonsense issued from the lips of Attorney General Eric Holder. This is from the Irish Times
How can these people say these things with a straight face? The opportunity to capture bin Laden never presented itself? It presented itself on a silver platter! The SEALs were not willing to take any chances, so they shot him in cold blood. Evidently the intelligence was faulty; bin Laden was not wearing any explosives, which should not have been that difficult to ascertain. What Holder meant by indicating very clearly the desire to surrender, I have already cited from Reuters:
Those conditions were meant to be impossible. The plan was to assassinate bin Laden, pure and simple. If he had begged not to be shot, would that be in a language the SEALs could understand? Would they care? Obama did not care a fig. He made the political calculation that killing bin Laden would be more popular among US citizens than capturing him, international law be damned. Obama is right up there with the most bloodthirsty pundits, pillorying anyone who dares to suggest bin Laden did not have to be killed. No doubt he would like to examine my head, so he could commit me to a mental institution! Is it any wonder I feel the need to keep my true identity secret?
Meanwhile, the drone strikes on Pakistan have been stepped up. This is from Reuters
What are these drone strikes accomplishing, besides showing how tough Obama is on terror? Few senior militants have been killed? That means more faulty intelligence. Those drone strikes are supposed to be directed at high-value targets when there is actionable intelligence and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to act? The CIA and Obama do not care how bad the intelligence is; if there is a chance of getting one of the bad guys, it does not matter if mistakes are made or how many civilians are killed. Some militants may have been killed, but the civilian casualty count is far higher. No matter; that is supposedly unavoidable collateral damage of the fog of war. The point is, USA sees an opportunity to clean house, so it will take every opportunity to kill as many enemies as possible, hoping to cripple or at least demoralize them. This is in keeping with the promise Obama made, to crush al Qaeda. He may know his efforts will have the opposite effect, but in the world of political reality, it hardly matters what the actual consequences are. What matters in that world is how all this can be spun to his advantage.
May 14th, 2011 at 12:07 am
US officials are puzzled by an unreleased audio message from bin Laden taken from the compound. It seems they want to believe bin Laden was so fixated on violence, he could not appreciate the relatively nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. This is from CNN
Why is it not possible that Osama bin Laden could appreciate the overthrow of tyrants who were considered US allies? The method may not have been what he thought would be necessary, but is it not the result that counts? USA has a habit of underestimating its enemies and casting them as irrational monsters. Mr. Gates may like to spin the overthrow of these tyrants as setbacks for al Qaeda, but they could be more of a setback for USA. As for Libya, the al Qaeda branch there is presumably a small minority of the rebels, so bin Laden may not have wished to take sides. In Tunisia and Egypt the revolutions have ostensibly succeeded, at least insofar as the tyrant has been toppled. In the other nations, the outcome is very much in doubt. Perhaps bin Laden wanted to be on the right side of history, even though the revolutionaries did not have to resort to the tactics he espoused. I find it ironic that US officials are so puzzled by this message. It may not fit their image of bin Laden as evil incarnate, but rarely is a prominent resistance leader as shallow and inflexible as USA wants to believe bin Laden was.
October 11th, 2011 at 1:00 am
President Obama has gotten another of his most wanted, US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Some has raised questions about assassinating a citizen without due process of law. This story is from the New York Times
There goes the New York Times again, conflating radicalism with anti-US extremism. There was nothing radical about this man or his message. But radical is the popular epithet thrown at whoever is being attacked; Republicans call Obama radical, Democrats call Republicans radical, and both call Muslim extremists radical. Perhaps they wish to evade the true meaning of the word, which all of the above cannot countenance, because a true radical is no friend of the mainstream or extremism.
Be that as it may, difficult circumstances do not create an excuse to do an end run around the Constitution. The purpose of freedom of speech is to protect the rights of unpopular minorities to have their say. Mr. Awlaki considered himself at war with USA, which supposedly made him a legitimate target. Where is the line drawn? The notorious COINTELPRO more or less conflated all dissent with treason. Mr. Awlaki could have been put on trial in absentia. This secret review is insufficient to justify an assassination in a free country. If the President wishes to acknowledge he has taken on executive powers more appropriate for a fascist state, at least that would be honest. It does not matter that Bush Jr. set the precedent; Obama was supposedly a constitutional scholar who would renounce unconstitutional executive powers. No, he wants to be seen as tough on terror, as tough as any Republican, so who cares about due process of law or what the Constitution requires before a criminal can be executed? It is claimed the war on terror changed everything, but did it change the Constitution? If USA must sacrifice its Constitutional principles in order to “win” the war on terror, the war is already lost; Osama bin Laden and his fellow travelers may have lost some battles, but they have won the war. Besides, as a strategic practical matter, creating martyrs usually backfires.