Understand. I am not usually the most positive character on the internets. I don’t know why I’ve lately felt the urge to go beyond merely diagnosing what ails us and offer up miracle cures. First I point out that the world would be a better place if people chose to forgo revenge in favor of justice. Then I suggested that most of our problems would go away if people would just stop beating the children. Fuck, man, just shoot me before flowers start wafting out of my mouth, I’d normally say, but what the hell, I might as while run with it while it lasts.
But before enlightening anyone with my next insight into the betterment of mankind, which I’ve forgotten anyway (I’m sure it will come back to me), I will revisit the question of revenge vs. justice and get in some mandatory Bush bashing along the way.
William Arkin writes in the Washington Post’s Early Warning blog that:
So now it seems from Nigeria and Somalia to the Lebanon to the Persian Gulf to Pakistan and Bangladesh to Indonesia and the Philippines, even all the way to Toronto and Atlanta, Islamic foot soldiers unite under an Osama bin Laden banner...
Washington conventional wisdom on al Qaeda is thus wrong on two counts: First, al Qaeda is not really denied sanctuary in Afghanistan and Pakistan and it is not dead. Second, al Qaeda is far more inspiration for what goes on in Iraq than civil war fighters or counter-insurgency theorists want to admit.
Yes, Osama bin Laden is an inspiration to millions. Why? Because after 9/11, we sought revenge rather than justice.
You may recall that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Taliban offered to arrest and try Osama bin Laden for the murders of so many people at the World Trade Center. And before 9/11, the Taliban were negotiating with the United States about handing over bin Laden for trial by an international tribunal at the
Yet we repudiated these offers because we wanted him dead, or barring that, tried by a U.S. military tribunal. Under no circumstances did we want bin Laden to get a fair trial in an impartial court and live to talk about it. Why? Because we wanted revenge more than we wanted justice.
Just think. What would the world be like if bin Laden was wasting away in an orange jump suit in a cell in the Netherlands, found guilty of mass murder beyond a reasonable doubt? Would Islamic foot soldiers from across the globe be united under his banner? No duh.
And what, you might ask, would have become of the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein? The U.S. Republican leadership, including Donald Rumsfeld, are the only ones who ever supported Saddam and no American political faction ever supported the Taliban.
Well, it’s only speculation, but repressive regimes usually fall under their own weight, and they fall faster when the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is united in isolating them, as was the case in 2001. It would be nice to think that the world would be better off without that kind of scum in any circumstances, but that has proved not to be the case. Twice as many Iraqis die per year under our occupation than died per annum under Saddam and women’s rights are a thing of the past. Free Afghanistan is flooding the world with heroin, human rights are only marginally better, at best, and it is still a haven and training ground for terrorists. And all of that is spilling out into the rest of the Muslim world, and beyond.
Ah, what might have been. Had George W. Bush done the right thing and gotten bin Laden turned over for trial, he probably would have been a one term president like his dad. And I’m sure that he would have gone down in history as a mediocre president, at best. But we now know, with 20/20 hindsight, that putting away bin Laden in 2000 would have made him a great president. He had his chance.
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