Shibboleth: we can legitimately attack anyone who fails to assist in proving Osama bin Laden's guilt.
Of necessity, this sibboleth shall be volatile. Some hard evidence might eventually show up … but then we shall have even less cause for aggression towards those unwilling to aid in further proving the point.
The U.S.A. and its allies – my own lords and masters among them
– demand that various countries make way to enable the U.S.A. to obtain
all the information they need in order to prove
the guilt of Osama bin
Laden, and to hand him over to them that they may bring him to court charged
with the attrocity which has (undeniably) been committed this September against
folk abiding, at the time, in the U.S.A.'s judrisdiction.
Now, any jurisdiction has proper cause to refuse to extradite a suspect into another jurisdiction unless there are clear grounds for supposing that the last shall give the suspect a fair trial. Before even the first evidence (viz, the fact that the hi-jackers were arabs – circumstantial evidence at best, given that the C.I.A. has been known to hire rag-heads when its needs call for them) had been obtained, the U.S.A.'s authorities were accusing arabs: how then might any Arabic jurisdiction suppose that Osama bin Laden (an arab, whom the U.S.A.'s authorities have clearly indicated intense dislike) will be given a fair trial if handed over to the U.S.A.'s courts ? Furthermore, Osama bin Laden was accused by the U.S.A.'s authorities within days, though no hard evidence of his involvement was disclosed within a week. How then might one suppose that the U.S.A. contains a jury of twelve citizens (regardless of their failure to be the accused's peers; regardless equally of the blatant injustices perpetrated by the U.S.A.'s courts in a plethora of cases amongst its own citizens; regardless, equally, of that nation's ability to find these twelve exceptional citizens) who might assess the evidence impartially, were there any evidence to assess ?
Yet the U.S.A. proposes to punish
those nations which fail to assist
it in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden – making such threats before there is
even a shred of evidence presented. At this point, the nations threatened with
such punishment
, along with anyone who cares for justice in international
affairs, may reasonably object that, when the United States of America has been
found guilty of assisting terrorist activities
for the sake of but one specific example, let me quote the mining of Managua's port in the 1980s, of which the international court in the Hague found the U.S.A., via its Central
IntelligenceAgency, guilty; albeit the U.S.A. then demonstrated its contempt for international justice by: slandering that E.U.-hosted court ascommunist; and subverting the electoral processes of Nicaragua so as to install a client government willing to waive the billions of dollars due to it as the U.S.A.'s attonement for its crime in exchange for a few millions of dollars ofaidfor which the peons should be duly grateful,
it did not in any sense assist in exposing the guilty individuals – which the U.S.A. harbours to this day – to the proper course of justice in the jurisdictions in which those crimes were committed. Likewise, as the U.S.A. declares its umbrage against those governments which aid and abet terrorism, those who are not wholly swallowed up in the shibboleth of the day must surely attend to the fact that the U.S.A.'s Central Intelligence Agency has fostered various terrorist organisations
most notably the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's cohorts; next, the various dictatorships which have, with the C.I.A.'s aid, ousted democratically elected governments throughout the world; but equally the
contramercenarries who constituted the gun, pointed at the Nicaraguan people's head, overtly by the U.S.A. as a threat while demanding that they elect, as their government, the above-mentioned client coalition the U.S.A. had chosen to fund to such an extent as to make a mockery of that nation's elections
and, in consequence, find the U.S.A. to be a nation which fosters, shelters, harbours, funds, trains, aids and abets terrorists and terrorist organisations throughout the world. For another example, consider the events of (and leading up to) September 11th 1973.
Meanwhile, the U.S.A. is a major center of activity of the mafia (and, in
particular, the Cosa Nostra) which even the U.S.A.'s own authorities acknowledge
as a criminal organisation, yet acknowledge these organisations to be beyond
their ability to bring to justice – yet it demands that other nations
deliver up evidence sufficient to prove the guilt of Osama bin Laden and his
cohorts, which those nations may fairly describe in similar terms as beyond
our ability to track
– all the more so as the countries in question
have more than ample trouble maintaining their own laws in their own
jurisdiction, let alone controlling breaches of other nation's laws without
their jurisdiction.
Now, in all propriety, I should remark that Osama bin Laden appears, in
truth, to be a hate-monger who has trained many in the ways of violence –
and may credibly be expected to train more in that path. As such, I shall not
utter one word of complaint if he is flatly butchered, along with those who
chose to stand by him in his hour of need. Yet I shall point out any hypocrisy
uttered by his butchers – if they do other than describe him as a threat
they chose to annul, regardless of whether he was in fact involved in the WTC
attrocities. By the same token I would be delighted to see the U.S.A. disolve
its Central Intelligence Agency
and make public all records of its
activities over (at least) the last half century, so as to enable other nations
to bring suit against those, including many citizens of the U.S.A., who have
perpetrated crimes (which one might, emotively, describe as terrorist) against
the citizens of those nations.
The truth must be faced: it is absurd for first-world nations to expect
third-world nations to respect the rule of international law except in so far as
first-world nations have consistently demonstrated a commitment to upholding
(much less abiding by) international law. In so far as there are valid
arguments that such law (notably its intellectual property
aspects) is
biassed in favour of first-world nations, it would be rash to expect third-world
nations (improverished by, for instance, their inability to enter into fair
competition in high-profit markets – quite apart from the injustices of
debt burdens) to consider international law fair
. Unless the law is not
only just but seen to be just – and justly enforced – it is a
chimera which one must expect hard-pressed folk to ignore.
Consider the following quotes from a 1995 report by the US Strategic Command called "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence", cited by Noam Chomsky in one of his articles (the bits in double quotes are from the report, whose authors are the guys with the nukes):
The study advocates that the U.S. exploit its nuclear arsenal to portray itself as "irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked." That "should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries," particularly the "rogue states." "It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed," let alone committed to such silliness as international law and treaty obligations. "The fact that some elements" of the U.S. government "may appear to be potentially `out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers."
Given such a background, one could almost believe the Strategic Command would contemplate committing (or commissioning, for example via one of the diverse terrorist organisations its CIA colleagues have fostered over the years) the kind of attrocity we saw on 2001/September/11 simply in order to justify doing crazy things afterwards …
Written by Eddy.