In today’s edition of the Washington Post (5/2/11), Dan Balz puts forth what is probably going to be a popular theme in the coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden: that catching the Al-Qaeda leader was a top concern of both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Bush put down the marker not long after the September 11 attacks, saying he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” That was taken as a sign of cowboy swagger by a Texan president by some of his critics, but it was a reflection of the absolute importance that he and much of the nation attached to bringing to justice the man responsible for the worst terrorist attack on the homeland in the history of the nation….
Bin Laden eluded Bush and his team, to their regret, but not for lack of trying. Bush’s persistence was palpable and set the tone for the intelligence community tasked with bringing bin Laden to justice. Obama picked up on that commitment when he came into office and redoubled efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda and kill bin Laden.
To cite just one memorable moment that this account overlooks, Bush declared in March 2002:
Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized…. I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly gathers the rest of the evidence of the Bush administration’s less than “palpable” pursuit, including:
In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden.
In September 2006, Bush told Fred Barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an “emphasis on bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.”
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” – G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
I’d call that less than palpable.
Bush’s dismissal of bin Laden’s importance was a rare–and likely accidental–moment of candor. He and bin Laden used one another for personal gain for years:
http://claslib2.tripod.com/lh/060927.html
Benen, at Washington Monthly, writes about “Bush’s failed strategy that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora.” I’ve always suspected this was the same sort of “failed strategy” that, before the invasion of Iraq, led Bush to turn down three opportunities to kill terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The administration repeatedly used the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq as part of its case for war, always hammering home the presence of this terrorist in the country, always presenting this as a case of Iraqi cooperation with terrorism, always neglecting to mention that Zarqawi was an anti-Saddam militant operating, with other anti-Saddam militants in a section of Iraq controlled by the U.S.-allied Kurds, and completely out of Saddam’s reach. As NBC reported, the Bush gang turned down repeated Pentagon plans to kill Zarqawi before the invasion because “the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam”:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/ns/nightly_news/
Zarqawi would later become the leader of the anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq, and would kill hundreds and perhaps thousands of people, including Americans. It seems reasonable to assume this same thinking may have been behind the decision to allow bin Laden to escape Tora Bora; a captured or dead bin Laden would have convinced many Americans it was Miller time, with regard to Bush’s War On Terror.
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Left Hook!
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
I think it’s probable, given the vast intelligence resources at its disposal, that the US knew where bin Laden was, and had for a long time, and for reasons that hopefully will become clear soon, decided to kill him at this time.
As for that assassination, one mass murderer killed another.
And the far more dangerous one celebrates.
And what a week for the corpress.
First they get to fawn over royalty.
And now they can engage in an orgy of Americanismo after the killing of Public Enemy Number One.
Doesn’t get much better than this, does it?
Republicans only seem to remember GWB’s 2001 quote on OBL, but strangely not anything after.
This is the PERFECT time to call out the Shrub for his lack of guts and committment to anything! Obama had to do George’s work for him, instead of being able to “Let George Do it”! Of course, Bush could never have even thought of this by himself…or with help…he would have used Rummy who would have dropped bombs on innocent people and let bin Laden escape again!
Just a few reflections:
1) I’m no fan of bin Laden but I do not like the celebration of the death of anyone.
2) I’m concerned about beating of the war drum against Pakistan that I hear
Other than that just some quick thoughts and a short history. Iran had a progressive government under Mosadegh. He was disposed by the CIA and the British Secret Service under Project Ajax. The Shah was installed, and like any dictator, he immediately eradicated any opposition in order to consolidate power. Then 25 years later in the late 1970s, he is disposed by the Ayatollah.
But who does the Ayatollah represent other than right-wing Muslim fundamentalism, as does bin Laden? So bin Laden and the Ayatollah represent a reactionary response to Western influence. They want to restore the Middle East to a time before Western domination (at this point I am thinking of King’s speech at Riverside Church; those of you familiar with that speech will know the line I am thinking of) and they’ve identified their religion as the thing that defines them and the foundation of their society.
They are more similar to conservatives in this country than you might think. Just think of that conservative judge in Alabama who was ordered to remove a statue of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Many religious people believe the Ten Commandments are the foundations of Western Civilization, that these foundations were given to us by God. That judge is certainly not a believer in the social contract. And conservatives in this country want to turn the clock back to when? The 1950s? When dad was the head of the household, mom stayed home and took care of the kids, people respected authority, the work ethic was strong, and everyone went to church. Of course this is a myth.
So Muslim fundamentalism is one response to Western domination. What about a more progressive response, one in which people look forward to a better time? Well, I think all those people have either been executed or forced underground either by, in the case of Iran, by the Shah or the Ayatollah.
Let’s hope that the death of bin Laden and current events in the Middle East lead to a great reawakening. I am tired of the expression “Arab world.” There is only one world. Let us look forward to the day when we all lock arms and march in unison to a better world.
I am gald to read the remarks of sober minder persons. Justice has not been been achieved. With all the celebration over the death of bin Laden, I have wondered why the imperalists missed the opportunity to decapitate — the word has been used — bin Laden and then place his head on a pole and parade it across the nation beginning at Ground Zero. The blood vengeance is a disgrace flying in the face of those who tout their taking the moral high ground. Of course, this is nothing new to a nation’s leaders who sanction political assasinations, and we are not speaking of in-effigy. It would have been better to have taken Osama bin Laden alive and then tried him in the World Court. This move would have been appreciated in the world for its moral and political tack.
It is a shame that the god-fearing people of the U.S. seem to still have their heads up their collective ass for the most part when it comes to understanding the history that is happening right in front of their noses. The wars have been and continue to be based on lies, the 9/11 Commission lied about what happened with the Twin Towers + the 3rd building that were obviously imploded, the Pat Tillman killing, Jessica Lynch’s rescue, the discovery of Sadaam, the financial melt-down that was choreographed by Wall Street, Bradley Manning’s torture….the list seems endless! Yet here they are high-fiving over the murder of an unarmed “terrorist” like it makes any sense. I give up!!!
DEYAN RANKO BRASHICH has sent you a link to a blog:
Blog: CONTRARY VIEWS
Post: JUSTICE UNDONE, IT’S MURDER THEY SAID
Link: http://mycontraryviews.blogspot.com/2011/05/justice-undone-its-murder-they-said.html
JUSTICE UNDONE, IT’S MURDER THEY SAID
â┚¬Ã…“Justice was doneâ┚¬Ã‚ was Barack Obama’s take on the assassination of Osama bin Laden. It wasn’t. Justice was not done, it was undone. Obama, of all people, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a former law professor and a lawyer, should know better. Justice requires that laws be honored and not discarded for political expediency.
Assassination is the extrajudicial intentional killing by a government of a person for a political purpose. Perhaps Attorney General Eric Holder should remind him that assassinations, or â┚¬Ã…“targeted killingsâ┚¬Ã‚Â, sanctioned by a sate are illegal. As early as February 18, 1976, President Ford signed Executive Order 1190, a finding and directive having the force of law, banning political assassinations [â┚¬Ã…“Prohibition of Assassination. No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.â┚¬Ã‚Â] President Carter followed suit with Executive Order 12036 which banned even indirect U.S. involvement in assassinations. President Reagan finally signed the still in effect Executive Order 12333 on December 1, 1981 which provides:
executive order 12333– united states intelligence activities 46 fr 59941, 3 cfr 1981
2.11 Prohibition on Assassination. No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
2.12 Indirect Participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order.
Sadly Obama is following the lead of two morally deficient Presidents. Bill Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate, recently and publicly admitted to secretly approving bin Laden as target for assassination [after the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar as Salaam in 1998], and George Bush who publicly called for his murder, â┚¬Ã…“his head on a plateâ┚¬Ã‚Â, after 9/11. Fortunately for them, and for us, his murder/assassination did not occur on their watch.
Justices Roberts, Thomas and Scalia, and those other dolts now sitting on the Supreme Court, can not be counted on to give the President sage advice. President Truman heeded Justice Robert Jackson’s principled call preventing the summary execution, the â┚¬Ã…“assassinationâ┚¬Ã‚ Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã…“murderâ┚¬Ã‚Â, of Nazi leaders after the Second World War: â┚¬Ã…“The only course [we have] is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused [in the present case bin Laden] after a hearing [in a court of law] as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear.â┚¬Ã‚ The result was the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, an imperfect meting out of a victor’s justice, but justice nonetheless.
Martin Borman, Herman Göring, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop, among others, stood accused, tried, convicted and sentenced. The sentences, including the death penalty, were carried out. Now these men were responsible for the deaths counting in the millions, not the mere thousands that can be ascribed to bin Laden. You can not equate bin Laden’s crimes, as dastardly and cowardly as they may be, with those committed by the perpetrators of the holocaust. As chilling and gruesome as the collapse of the World Trade Center was, with people jumping to their death, it can not compared to the millions gassed and cremated in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and Buchenwald. Think of the heaps of black and white striped pajama clad human remains confronting the liberating United States Army. Remember Schindler’s List. Think of the cities and countries laid to waste, to rubble. These men were truly evil, evil in a way that defies rational description. These men were Major League players while bin Laden was, at best, in the littlest of the Little Leagues.
But then, in 1945, justice was done. The rule of law, as imperfect and flawed as a victor’s tribunal may have been, was followed: indictment, trial, conviction and sentence. Yes, sentence, even the death sentence, if deemed appropriate.
Bill Clinton, notwithstanding his secret authorization for bin Laden’s assassination, publicly, at least, adhered to the constraints of the rule of law. On November 5, 1998 his Justice Department filed an indictment with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York accusing bin Laden of a host of crimes, some carrying the death penalty. But once that indictment was filed, and it is still on file and operative, the constraints of law came into play. The next step was arrest and trial, not assassination, not murder, unless that killing was the unfortunate result of resistance to lawful apprehension.
The circumstances of bin Laden’s killing remain murky. Will they ever be fully disclosed? I don’t know.
So far we have been denied the photographic evidence of his demise on national security grounds. The photos are too grisly for us to view, they tell us. Yet Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill I & II, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other grisly images too numerous to name flick daily across our video [no longer just TV] screens. Why does our government seek to shield our sensibilities now?
Is it because, as some senior Pakistani officials claim, the â┚¬Ã…“people inside the house were unarmedâ┚¬Ã‚Â? Is it because â┚¬Ã…“there was no resistanceâ┚¬Ã‚Â? Is it because â┚¬Ã…“it was cold-blooded [murder]â┚¬Ã‚Â? Is it because bin Laden was shot in the back of the headâ┚¬Ã‚Â, execution style? Is it because â┚¬Ã…“â┚¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚Â? Is it because â┚¬Ã…“â┚¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚Â? Is it because â┚¬Ã…“â┚¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚Â? You fill in the blanks.
Now many have voiced opinions pro and con. But voices of temperance and reason are starting to be heard. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Dr. Rowan Wiliams, having just married Bill and Kate, said:
â┚¬Ã…“I think the killing of an unarmed man â┚¬Ã‚¦[just] doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done. â┚¬Ã‚¦ [W]hen we are faced with someone who ws manifestly a war criminal in terms of atrocities inflicted it is important that justice is seen to be served.â┚¬Ã‚Â
Bin Laden’s demise is not to be celebrated. It is to be mourned not as the death of a hero or martyr, nor as the victory of good over evil. His death, assassination, murder, whatever, should be mourned as the death of justice, as we know it and want it to be.
Adolf Hitler — when he needed a “fall guy” terrorist to rally the SS and the “volksturm” of German public opinion — once had Albert Einsteins’s home while raided while the professor was en route to the Third Reich from the US.
Supposedly, the Nobel Prize winner was stockpiling an arsenal of WMDs in his residence. The reason: in order to arm a Jewish uprising to protest the passage of the anti-Semitic 1935 Nuremberg Laws.
The SS and Gestapo agents who raided the place found nothing more than a bread knife on the premises. Meanwhile, Einstein got off one ocean liner, boarded a return liner, and renounced his German citizenship en route back to the US.
He became an American citizen in 1940. The year before, he assisted a friend — Hungarian-born and Jewish refugee physicist Leo Szilard — to send a letter to FDR urging the President to start work on a nuclear weapon before Hitler did.
Hitler couldn’t have cared less. The raid on Einstein’s home was for internal consumption only. F**k the rest of the world — even though the raid came just before the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. 100,000 spectators in one stadium at one time would be a juicy target for Jewish retaliation. But that was of surprisingly little meaning to the Nazis. The Einstein “rumor” had already done its dirty work for them. Nothing would be allowed to ruin their “Greatest Show On Earth” and the rest of the world knew it.
Needless to say about dictators — the forum of domestic and world public opinion is no more or no less convenient to them until it can be manipulated or justified by “greater” affairs of state.
The New York Times of that era ran the story about the Einstein raid and its political and propagandistic intent. It actually stuck to the facts. The New York Times of today would probably run Hitler’s story instead.
Thank you, Deyan Ranko Rashich, for taking the time and having the skill to express views that I entirely agree with, and doubt that I will find expressed anywhere else. I can go to bed with the knowledge that I am not alone in the world with my particular views. I hardly need to add that this is the absolute end, for me at least, of any ability to believe the face value of anything Obama says.
No one rewrites history like the Corporate American press. I want to say thank you to FAIR and to all of you who wrote here for all of your sane and thoughtful comments. It heartens me, after all of the discouraging press this week, to hear the truth spoken out so wisely and articulately. For you to point out that this killing was not “justice,” that our government’s motives and movements are highly suspect at best, and have been since 9/11, is affirmation to me of what has seemed obvious for almost ten years.
I think it was on 9/12 that I first said that bin Laden was the best thing that ever happened to George W.. That if he hadn’t come along W. would have had to invent him… and that, in a way, he did. In fact, what do we know about Osama bin Laden except what our government has told us? The whole miserable business is a paste-up… But I was shouted down.
Thank you all for speaking up.
First off…George Bush worked hard to bring this man down(As did Clinton). Taking a sentence that in effect meant “I am dealing with more important issues at this time(We were in a vicious war)”does not in any stretch of the imagination mean he had forgotten about OBL. Obama’s success is directly related in every way to Bushes work.and to some extent Clintons work.They in effect worked together to achieve his death.
Now for the ugliness.And this war that started on 911 is UGLY. Swimming in sewers is never clean.We will be arguing long after the key players are gone, how we have conducted ourselves.Torture?Hard to stomach the thought that we are involved in this.Gitmo?I understand …..yet cant embrace the concept within the framework of American understanding of law. Assassination?Well he was a man who led a movement that had grievously attacked us and meant to do so again.He and his followers had declared war on us ,and made war on us.In the accepted rules of warfare he certainly was targeted.In any real sense his “capture”would be more problematic(and dangerous) than his death.He had sworn never to be taken alive.He was thought to wear a suicide vest(he after all was the greatest proponent of such things).He would be defended on some level by his minions.
I think if the Navy seals had gone in and found him naked waving a white flag with all his followers also naked standing with arms raised they may of had a chance for some sort of safe passage to trial. Seconds after landing they were fired on.They then went into a mode that this is what they expected.What they trained for.All bets were off.He was going down.Now it was “get him” and get everybody out with as little loss of American life as we could accomplish.Word is their were 13 children.Woman….all running about in the dark.All -including one woman (shot in the leg) made it out alive.This was not a massacre.4 men were killed.One firing.One rushing them.And two in trying to elude capture.OBL died in proximity to two weapons moving toward them.I simply can not fault the seals or Obama.He was considered a lethal danger.He was not going to get the chance to kill again.
It is troubling to me that a lot of bloggers here are angry with Obama.It seems when he finally does the job he has sworn to do you see it as loosing his soul.His job is not to uphold an ideology that is often blatantly anti American)You seem to believe that he has not followed the mandate YOU hired him for.A mandate thats goal is America apologizing for, and deconstructing her evil self.I feel like this sickness of blame America first,and hatred of( your boogie men) corporatism and the imposition of class warfare and the rest of it,has caused you to throw your own guy under the bus.It shows that this ideology is primary to you.Sad
Hopefully this less than believable scenario of the cold-blooded murder of a terror suspect is just a political ploy to end the war in Afghanistan which is breaking the US as it helped break up the USSR. If one remembers a few days before the killing of bin Laden was announced Obama actually mentioned cutting some Pentagon spending to try to save the dollar.
Let’s hope that lying bastard in the White House will at least make an effort to stave off another Great Depression.
http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/
Here’s Chomsky’s response to everything.
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