Global IssuesU.S. Celebrates Controversial Justice
By a few minutes before midnight on May 1, huge jubilant crowds had amassed outside the White House in Washington D.C. and around Ground Zero and Times Square in New York City.
Clad in spangled banners with stars in their eyes, average people converged to rejoice in the death of al Qaeda's poster boy Osama bin Laden — the man who, for the last 10 years, has constituted the fulcrum of the U.S.'s 'war on terror' — after Navy Seals gunned him down in his high-security Abbottabad compound just 50 kilometres north of Islamabad, Pakistan.
The celebrations began just minutes after U.S. President Barak Obama's late-night address to the nation during which he triumphantly announced the success of a long hunt that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s director Leon Panetta had placed at the top of his priority list three years ago.
Evoking the tragedy of Sep. 11, 2001 — most U.S. citizens' first and last reference point for bin Laden — Obama said, 'For over two decades, bin Laden has plot[ted] attacks against our country and our allies. [His] death marks the most significant achievement in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda […] but it does not mark the end of our effort.'
'There's no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us,' Obama said. 'We must - and we will - remain vigilant at home and abroad.'
Shortly after Obama's nine-minute speech, his words turned into fodder for the analysts, professors and civil society pundits who did not partake in the celebrations and predict that the U.S. will remain mired in wars even after the demise of one of the most wanted men in history.
'Seeing the celebrations on the streets was striking, because bin Laden's death was not about rough justice delivered by victims. It was about a big killer — the U.S. government — killing a smaller one,' award-winning journalist Allan Nairn told Democracy Now! Monday morning.
'Bin Laden might be dead, but his doctrine is still alive, it lives on in the American White House and the Pentagon,' Nairn added. 'Every day, in seats of authority all over the world, either directly through its forces or indirectly through proximity to its clients, this [doctrine] is killing — at a minimum — dozens of people,' he said.
Implications for intelligence and interrogation
One key question is what impact the CIA's successful operation will have on the future of 'information gathering' via harsh interrogation tactics and even torture in detention centres around the world.
The New York Times reported Monday that bin Laden's death, following a helicopter assault on his safe-house two hours away from Pakistan's capital, was the result of 'eight months of painstaking intelligence work' in one of history's 'most extensive and frustrating manhunts'.
It is now widely accepted that the crucial lead on bin Laden's whereabouts came from Guantanamo detainees, who identified his trusted courier as a protégée of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, 'the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks' according to the 9/11 Commission Report.
'This operation was a culmination of the life's work of [members] of the most elite force in the U.S. military,' Jeremy Scahill, author of 'Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army', reported Monday.
Referring to heads of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and members of Navy Seal Team Six who carried out the assault, Scahill, quoting retired U.S. Army Commander Barry McCaffrey, said, 'These men are some of the most dangerous people on planet earth.'
Andrea Prasow, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch's Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, told IPS, 'The only way we can really close the chapter on terrorism is by holding people accountable for their crimes. The U.S. today has a terrible track record on that, it has become an embarrassment in the international community and has violated international law.'
'If it's true that some information was attained through interrogation that ultimately led to the killing of bin Laden, we have to ask how much more might have been obtained through lawful interrogation methods,' Prasow added.
'How many years earlier might we have been captured or killed him if the U.S. had complied with their legal obligations? The U.S.'s decision to use unconventional interrogation methods may well have resulted in a significant loss of information,' she said.
Echoing the words of British Pakistani historian Tariq Ali, who said earlier Monday that the U.S. missed a moment to truly educate the U.S. masses on democracy in action by capturing bin Laden and trying him in a court of law, Prasow told IPS, 'It absolutely would have been preferable to have tried him in a public tribunal where victims of family members — and really the whole world — would have been able to witness justice being done.'
Harking to the success of the Arab Spring as a much more dignified method of securing justice and democracy, Nairn said Monday, 'Americans who know the face and evil deeds of bin Laden see him dead and think 'oh great!''
'But they don't see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 innocent children and civilians that the U.S. killed that day - if they did, they wouldn't be out in the streets cheering […] death.'
'I think we need an American uprising if we are going to stop this kind of killing,' he added.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service