Why the nature of bin Laden’s death matters

For the purposes of this piece I am going to assume that Osama bin Laden was killed during the American raid, although by disposing of the body at sea , the refusal to release photographs or video of bin Laden’s body, the absence of any first hand testimony from  the survivors of the raid (all  we  have is what the Pakistani authorities say the wives and children have said) and the continual changing of the story by the US government, just about everything has been done that could be done  to feed conspiracy theories.  (On the facts delivered so far,  it is simple to construct a coherent scenario in which bin Laden was not killed and the whole episode was a Wag the Dog construction.)

It is easy to persuade the general public that the killing is cause for a Thatcherite  cry of Rejoice! Rejoice!  After all this is the man who has been presented for a decade by the Western media and politicians as the personification of terrorist evil, the organiser of 911 and other enormities  and an implacable enemy of Western society. Does he not deserve summary execution? Why offer him justice when he has been responsible for thousands of deaths?  Many, probably most people in the USA feel that way. A large number in Britain and Europe do as well.  So what is the case against?

To make the case as clear-cut as possible, let us take him at that valuation assigned to him by Western politicians and  media.  The first and strongest argument is  that of precedent.  If  it is accepted that this raid was (a) legitimate despite the fact that  the US ostensibly operated in a foreign country without that country’s knowledge or permission and (b) the shooting of bin Laden was lawful, no place or person on Earth would in principle be safe from foreign powers crossing borders to  kidnap, kill,  maim or destroy  property as they  as they choose.

As for the raid itself, what is the position with regard to international law? It is indubitably illegal under international law to carry armed action into a foreign country without the permission of that country  unless it is in what is known as “hot pursuit”. This would cover a situation where  a country has been invaded by a foreign force, whether that be large or small, and in the pursuit of the invaders the chase crosses national boundaries.  That clearly is not the case here.

The other legal circumstances for an attack  would be where a serious and immediate threat was offered by a potential enemy, for example, in Napoleonic times if a great fleet  was massed in Northern  France  with large numbers of troop carrying ships, it would be reasonable to imagine that an invasion of England was to take place and consequently to take
pre-emptive action.  Again, this class of situation patently did not apply in the bin Laden attack, not least because al Qaeda has not be able to mount a serious terrorist attack in the West since 2005.

If Pakistan knew about  the attack in advance and  agreed to it, it would have been legal in as much as the raid took place.  It would not automatically make what happened in the raid legal.   The fact that no Pakistani military or police response to the fighting in the compound occurred , even though the Naval Seals who conducted the raid  were there for
around 40 minutes,  is a strong pointer to Pakistani government covert  knowledge and permission.   That the raid took place in a garrison town crawling with Pakistani troops  makes the failure to respond even more telling.   There were also reports that residents near to the bin Laden compound were warned an hour before the raid to put their lights out.

That leaves the killing of bin Laden. Was it murder or self-defence?  If the raid was illegal the killing was culpable; if the raid was legal the killing may have been legal.   However, the ever shifting  US descriptions of what happened at the compound are  indicative of something being not quite right. First we were told there was a “ fierce firefight” , then it was admitted that only one person – bin Laden’s courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti – who was not in the main building but a security post outbuilding, had fired a shot at the Navy Seals who carried out the attack.  First we were told bin Laden  had been armed and fired on the Seals; this changed to bin Laden being unarmed. First were told that bin Laden had used one of his wives as a human shield and she had been shot dead as a consequence; then the story became that the wife had been only wounded (in the leg) as  she charged at a Seal  after he daughter was hurt.  Eventually the story of bin Laden’s shooting became that a Seal had fired at him outside a door on the third floor of the building and missed after which bin Laden went through the door to the room in which he supposedly had spent the past few years where he was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8491113/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-White-House-backtracks-on-how-bin-Laden-died.html)

At any time such variations in a story would be highly suspicious.  In this case they are simply incredible because not only must the Navy Seals conducting the attack have known the
truth, but  the  audio and video coverage of the attack  from cameras operated by the Seals was being fed back to Washington as the attack was taking place.  Even here the official story changed. At first it appeared from the official version  – which included a photograph showing  Obama  et al  raptly watching real-time coverage of the raid – that   Obama, other senior members of his cabinet such as Hilary Clinton  and Obama’s  staff  had viewed the entire attack.  (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110503/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_bin_laden_obama_s_suspense) . After a day or so  the story changed and the official line was that Obama and co had ceased to have any video or audio fed to them after the Seals entered the compound (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Blackout-during-raid-on-bin-Laden-compound.html).  This probably was  done to give them deniability … “No, I did not see Osama shot or anyone else shot or harmed…”  after it transpired that no one in the main building had fired a gun and bin Laden had been shot whilst unarmed.  Nonetheless,  it is reasonable to believe that the cameras did continue to roll throughout the operation and that a live feed of the entire attack was fed to the head of the CIA as was originally reported . Consequently the truth must have been known when the initial false information was released. This episode has elements of Wag the Dog about it. Obama and co probably got so carried away with the PR  aspects that they made a fatal error: filming the raid. Worse thing they could have done. I bet they are all now  wetting themselves in case the video of the attack leaks.

The shooting of an unarmed  bin Laden of itself makes a good case for this being a pre-determined  killing.  On the one hand we have the Navy Seals, who are represented as the nearest thing to Superman in human flesh by the US authorities, and on the other a sick, prematurely aged unarmed man in his fifties.  Are we to believe that they could not have overpowered him with little risk to themselves?   It has been claimed by the US Government at various times that he was shot because  he was firing an automatic weapon,  that the Seals were afraid bin Laden  might have a suicide belt strapped to him,  and most absurdly that by dodging back into the room after the Seals had shot at him and missed,  bin Laden  had shown resistance which justified his killing.  That there was very little chance of bin Laden being taken alive even if that was an intention  is shown  by the instructions given to the Seals that he could only be taken alive if he was found naked (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8491768/Osama-bin-laden-would-have-to-be-naked-for-surrender.html).
That extreme rule of engagement suggests there was never an intention to take him alive.

Exactly what killed him is uncertain, with reports from the White House  claiming variously that  it was one shot in the head and one in the chest, two shots in the head  or  one shot in the chest and  two shots to the head. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8499216/Osama-bin-Laden-death-al-Qaedaleader-killed-after-he-retreated-into-his-room.html) . As the body was disposed of in the sea and no photographic evidence of his death has been released  it is impossible to know what wounds were inflicted. However, if he was hit with two shots wide apart, one to the body and one to the head,  that could suggest he was first wounded  in the chest then finished off with a shot to the head.  It is also possible that bin Laden may not have been shot in the chest but in the back. If so  he would have been unlikely to have presented a n immediate threat to highly trained special forces troops.  Alternatively it may have  been a  deliberate execution. Second-hand reports of what  bin Laden’s  12-year-old daughter has supposedly told the Pakistani authorities lend credence t o the idea.  She reputedly witnessed the killing and is reported as saying that  bin Laden was in the hands of the Seals when he was killed. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Osama-Was-Not-Armed-During-Raid-Daughter-Says-He-Was-Captured-And-The-Killed/Article/201105115984701).  If this happened it might provide the  explanation for why the story about Obama and co watching the entire raid on a live feed was changed so that they could not be questioned about how bin Laden was killed.

Where does this all leave us? Certainly not in the realm of justice.  There are prima facie grounds for believing the raid and the killing and woundings  that took place were illegal  under international law.  Ostensibly there was a gross breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty and the circumstances of the killings, especially that of bin Laden suggest manslaughter at best and murder at worst. But the  truth is that International law is no law at all, because there is no proper jurisdiction. By that I mean the law cannot  be enforced generally and without
fear or favour, There is no equality before the law, merely the exercise of power by those with it. Weak states  get invaded by the strong if the strong choose to invade.  Sometimes
the breaches of national sovereignty are given the legal fig leaf of  a UN resolution as there was  in the invasion of Afghanistan and more recently in the case of Libya with resolution 1973,  sometimes there is not as was the case  with the intervention in the Balkans after  Yugoslavia broke up. What this means is that the Americans involved in the raid, both those who planned  and those who executed it will never be investigated or brought to trial. It was not even a quasi-legal act,  but  simply a  massively powerful country acting unilaterally
to suit its own purposes.

The legal flimsiness of a UN resolution can be seen from the fact that action is taken without them if they are not forthcoming. This fragility can be seen further from  the way that  where resolutions are passed, once action is begun the terms of the resolutions  are frequently grossly exceeded , as is happening with the war in Libya where the UN sanctioned forces are acting as the rebels’  airforce and navy  and patently trying to kill Gaddafi despite the resolution only empowering  those enforcing it to protect the civilian population.   Sometimes, as was the case with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, this expansion of action takes place before an attack has begun by the actors in the attack claiming that UN resolutions passed before an attack was mooted are sufficient to legalise the attack, even if it is clear that they gave no such mandate.

There are  two  further problem with the UN granting legal sanction.  The first is obvious, namely, the five permanent members of the Security Council – USA, UK, France, Russia,
China – have the power of veto over any UN resolution. That means they can stop any legalising of action by the UN, including action against themselves,  without regard to any legal principles or process.  No legal system can be called legitimate which allows some of the actors within the territory it encompasses  to stand outside  its jurisdiction.

The second concerns the source of the legal authority of the UN.   It is an organisation of 192 states, the vast majority of which are dictatorships of varying degrees of brutality ,  most are deeply corrupt,  a fair number  are in a state of perpetual civil war and few have a meaningful justice system by which I mean one which attempts to provide equality before the law
and observes such things as rational rules of evidence and due process.   It is a strange crowd to be acting as a dispenser of justice.   In reality, it is simply a group comprised mainly of the vicious and the corrupt which has arrogated to itself power and called power legal authority.

Bad state habits abroad also have a knack of washing back into the country from which they came. Let a country have its will through violence abroad and the government of that country will be tempted often enough to transport such behaviour to the domestic arena to suppress political dissent .  Even if naked violence is not used, commonly  the freedom of a society will often be reduced, vide the Patriot Act in the USA (http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/index.html) and the Terrorism  Act of 2006  in the UK (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/11/contents).

Those who value the nation state should be alarmed by this raid, not least because the attack was simply one in a growing series  of actions supported by the West where national sovereignty has been over-ridden in the most flagrant and  brutal fashion and entangled  Western nations, most notably the USA and Britain, in a seemingly interminable series of wars  in which they have  no natural interest,  beginning with the intervention in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia through to the  present gratuitous involvement in the Libyan civil war.

This warfare is horribly reminiscent of the perpetual conflict in that great political novel 1984, not only in its continuous nature but in the way allies become foes and foes allies at the drop of a hat.  In this scenario bin Laden has been allotted by Western politicians and the mass media the role  Goldstein occupied  in 1984, the font not only of all evil but of all danger.  It is telling that only days after bin Laden’s death  the  Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser  Tom Donilon declared  al-Qaeda’s second in command  Ayman al-Zawahiri to be the world’s “number one terrorist” thus providing a replacement  demon to epitomise the Islamic terrorist threat  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8501294/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Ayman-al-Zawahiri-the-worlds-number-one-terrorist.html)
.

The preservation of the integrity of national sovereignty  is reason  enough to be disturbed  the nature of  bin Laden’s death, but there also the fact that action such as this  transgresses
precisely the  values which countries such as Britain and the USA purport to embody ; the rule of law, no sentence without trial, the presumption of innocence , freedom from  arbitrary state action. By behaving in such a violent and arbitrary way the USA and by extension the West  hands  a propaganda weapon of great potency to  Islamic terrorists  in particular and terrorists in general and makes outrage against any future Islamic terrorist attacks on the West morally problematic to say the least.  As the Israelis have found with the Palestinians,
state violence from reducing dissent and terrorism, feeds it.

Nothing I have written is intended to justify the views of bin Laden or excuse any act of terrorism.  What I am concerned with is the bigger geo-political picture, both in terms of preserving national sovereignty (which ironically was principle  upon which  the UN was founded) and in ending  Western interference in foreign conflicts which resolve nothing and leave a deep enmity towards the West in  the states who suffer the gratuitous interference.  In terms of the death, maiming, destruction and social dislocation they bring, the most dangerous people in the world are not the likes of al Qaeda  but the liberal internationalists such as Blair and the NeoCons such as George W Bush .  We need to find a way of stopping their insatiable appetite for war from being constantly sated.