Chomsky on Bin Laden, and extradition (9 May)
" We might ask ourselves how would we be reacting if Iraqi
commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him,
and dumped his body in the Atlantic."
Nothing like a Chomsky quote for a little thought dynamite to focus
the mind.
As a follow up to my last post and my final word on the topic, it's
worth bearing in mind Professor Noam Chomsky's views on
extradition, as the term hasn't been used here in relation to Bin
laden, and what might possibly have been a sensible alternative.
And it serves as a sober antidote to much of the commentary in the
weekend papers (deserves to be killed like a rat...killed and
thrown to the sharks, that type of mouth spitting).
And so I dug out an old book I read from October 2001, in the
aftermath of September to give some perspective on recent events.
In asking the question of what should be done about Bin Laden and
Afghanistan, and what the US should do he writes:
" What was the right way for Britain to deal with IRA bombs in
London? One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the
sources of their finances, places like Boston, or to infiltrate
commandos to capture those suspected of involvement in such
financing and kill them or spirit them to London to face
trial."
Chomsky writes that would have been criminal idiocy. The proper
path is to seek extradition, and in the longer term realistically
address concerns and grievances in the Middle East - fairly
understandable if we choose to listen. In terms of proceeding with
the ghastly crime, the first steps are to gather the evidence,
apprehend the criminal and bring him to justice. "How do you
deal with a crime? "Chomsky writes. "First you find out who the
criminals were, then you apprehend them, then you bring them to
justice. You cannot apprehend them until you know who they are. So
the first step is to try and find out who did it. As I said they
never did that. Eight months later (after 9/11) they were saying
the plotting and implementation were probably carried out in the
UAE and Germany. Therefore that's where you should have been
looking to apprehend them. Suppose you had evidence about Osama Bin
Laden - which I assume is true - then you apprehend
him. How? Seek extradition. "
Another important point missing in today's fog of information is,
if we can recall back to late 2001, the Taliban were willing to
discuss handing over Bin Laden. A central theme in the week gone
was that the Taliban refused to 'hand him over' so we had to go get
him. But we know from the aftermath of 9/11 that the Taliban were
at least open to the idea. We don't know how much by because the US
refused to engage, but we know that they were at least amenable to
it. Quoting Arundhati Roy - "The Taliban's response for the
extradition of Bin Laden has been uncharacteristically reasonable:
produce the evidence, then we'll hand him over."
And in the end, the Navy Seals have given what Bin Laden ultimately
wanted - legitimacy. To quote distinguished British human rights
lawyer Geoffrey Robertson - " The last thing (Bin Laden) wanted was
to be put on trial, to be convicted and to end his life in a prison
farm in Upstate New York. The way to demystify the man is not to
kill him and have the iconic picture of his body. The way to
demystify him is to put him on trial, to see him as a hate-filled
old man screaming from the dock."
As I'm writing this I've just noticed a small article in the paper.
A most wanted Nazi faces life term at 97 in one of the last
Holocaust era trials. Sandor Kepiro was a gruesome murderer. His
alleged role in the massacre involved taking many hundreds of
Serbs, Jews, and Roma gypsies down to the banks of a river to be
either shot or thrown alive into the freezing Danube. Kepiro was
one of Nazidom's most wanted by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. And
what did Simon Wiesenthal do when he found these notorious
terrorists in all corners of the globe? Gathered evidence, sought
extradition, apprehended them and gave them up for trial. As should
have happened with Bin Laden - at least if our regard for proper
justice is genuine.
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