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PhotographyWe have very little information so far, but it is enough to put together a picture:
Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces. In Pakistan. Bin Laden was unarmed, and assassinated with a headshot. We know by now that it was a so-called “mission to kill” (Reuters released a report about this yesterday). Furthermore, the CIA director said that the Pakistani government was not informed on purpose in order to secure the safety of the mission. They responded sourly that the behavior of the United States military will not be tolerated in the future. Apparently they don’t dare to say their opinion because they are afraid the US will point fingers at them for having been unable to locate bin Laden themselves.
Bin Laden – so the US military says – received an immediate burial in the sea.
Ok. Now imagine US special forces illegally invading Germany, or France, and assassinating someone with a headshot, without so much as informing the responsible government.
As a reminder: the US broke international law. In Europe, and hopefully in some other parts of the world as well, we don’t believe in killing people, no matter under which circumstances. We believe that everybody has the same rights, even terrible people. Yes, people get shot in a war, and some people might even deserve it. And if there would have been a gunfight in which bin Laden would have been killed, I would have probably even felt relief. But assassinating him like that will simply not do.
I was shocked to hear that thousands of American citizens spontaneously gathered at the White House for a party (this is Washington, not Texas), and even moreso when I saw many American celebrities commenting on how awesome this is etc.
Have you lost your minds? Do you realize that this is exactly what your “enemies” do when they manage to kill an American soldier – running through the streets, celebrating? That this is exactly the behavior you consider so inhumane and terrible when you see it on the news? You cannot impose freedom and democracy onto other nations when you don’t live up to your own premises!
Please understand that killing people never ever helps, because it will always cause retaliation. Yes, horrible things have been done to the American people with 9/11, but that does not excuse or legitimate these actions. As you know, you have killed thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last years (“collateral damage”), giving people from the Middle East the same “rights” for retaliation as you have. This will go on and on if you don’t stop it.
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Many people were critical about this, and the disaster of Guantanamo (there are still innocent people imprisoned, some of them for over 8 years!) and the assassination of bin Laden will not contribute to the American president as a president of peace.
And what about you, Europeans?
Does noone have the courage to say that this was not ok? Do you understand that watching other countries breaking international law and standing by is not what the European people want from you?
Angela Merkel said: “I was happy to hear that bin Laden was killed.” Now I’m not very good with Christian ethics, but I had hoped that the leader of the Christian Party in Germany would oppose killing people (there was quite a specific rule about killing people…).
Apart from the fact that the behavior of the US regarding bin Laden was ethically and politically wrong, it was also stupid. Every sane person understands that bin Laden had very valuable information that would have been incredibly important to obtain – why do you miss out on your chance to gain the most valuable information anyone on this planet has regarding terrorism?
Dear United States: you consider yourself to be the greatest country in the world. Please act like it.
(Also, please stop assassinating politicians – even if they are terrorists – in Libya with missiles, for the same reasons given above. You killed innocent children there!)
EDIT: Noam Chomsky wrote a much better critique than I did:
“We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a ‘suspect’ but uncontroversially the ‘decider’ who gave the orders to commit the ‘supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole’ (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal)”
[...]
“Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’”
UPDATE:
Bin Laden’s family published a statement in the New York Times, raising questions like
- Why does the US assassinate people in other countries
- Why is there no evidence of bin Laden being dead
- Why was bin Laden (who was unarmed) killed and not arrested and brought to court
- Why were two innocent people (a woman and a child) killed in the raid, etc.
May 8th, 2011 at 10:43
Update: see Noam Chomsky’s critique
May 15th, 2011 at 18:11
First of all, there is not a shred of evidence that Bin Laden was killed. His own family doubts it (with good reason since he has deceased a long time ago). Evidence speaks against it. The released photo shows a completely unrelated crime victim, the released video scene shows an old man that is definitely not Bin Laden (wrong face, body and hand posture), but a local resident known as Akhbar Khan, well identified by neighbours and inhabitants of that quarter. If that is the guy they killed something went horribly wrong – or did it?
(now CT) As far as I see it, the Pentagon has decided to slowly get out of Afghanistan. There seems to be a split decision if Pakistan is the next goal, but I would guess that there is not enough money and backing to engage there. So the easiest way was to eliminate the haunting demon and claim “mission successful” yet again and leave sooner than later. (end CT)
Fact is that Bin Laden was NOT responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We know that much that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed (assassinated by a similar death squad in his residence 2005) claimed to be the mastermind behind 9/11 and that Mohammed Atta was the team leader when the plans progressed. Ramzi Binalshibh was the other influential figure. Both lived in Germany and were under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz 24/7 with all their phone calls wiretapped and monitored. Almost all later alleged 9/11 attackers had close ties to Western intelligence agencies and were funded and instructed by them and well-placed agent provocateurs, one of them being Abu Hamza in London. I will not tell the whole story now, but to sum it up, there is no way on this damn planet that America did not know of the later attacks in advance. There can be no “could not connect the dots” when the dots are in fact f***** whales on a cruiser.
That said, we still see lots of people celebrating Bin Laden’s death as a retaliation for 9/11. How can that happen? Are they all brainwashed? How can they believe a notorious lier like Bush or Cheney? Again for the record: Bin Laden is not responsible for 9/11. Not in any way. Not the finances, not the planning, not the training, nothing. I really pity those individuals that took their joy to the streets there. Not only are they so morally defunct, but also so incredibly brainwashed that they can’t tell a lie after 10 years. And I am talking facts, not conspiracy theory. The subject can be even more touchy when you know that Bin Laden was a CIA agent up to 9/11 and that he was allowed to escape from Tora Bora in late fall 2001.
But well, if people don’t get it after 10 years, hopes are lost imho. My only hope is that America will get into such troubled waters financially that they just cannot afford to torture and kill millions around the globe anymore. Any hope into the American people is vain.
May 16th, 2011 at 17:16
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of some of the points you mention. People are people, and most people are not better or worse than other people.
I would therefor disagree on what you state about “the American people”, I don’t think they are so much different from “the Spanish people” or “the Bulgarian people”. I understand your anger and your sadness, though.
May 18th, 2011 at 04:51
It is not so much a blame on the American people, but rather a blame on the American system of (alleged) democracy that is nothing but a veil for corporatocracy, at least on the federal level. So there is few chance for the people to exercise their democratic rights and they are outright denied them by the federal offices, wiretapping them, searching their homes, scanning them wherever they go… still a pretty free country, but if you look at political influence there is no choice in an American election. You either elect the Wall Street president that tells you he will leave you without rights or the Wall Street president that doesn’t tell you, but does so anyway. As long as the people does not interfere and press for a change on that (and it looks anything like it), you can blame at least that on them.
You are right though, there is little difference to other people. Many take a lot until they finally stand up for their rights.
May 24th, 2011 at 09:35
Franz, I cannot recommend Daemon and FreedomTM enough (Daniel Suarez). I’ll put up a review of the second book soon, it’s the most adequate critique of modern capitalism I’ve ever read, without being politically right or left.
And it offers solutions for a utopia that are feasible.
June 7th, 2011 at 12:33
“The Morality of Job in Death”: a post from Robert Kurzban on the EvoPsy journal weblog.
Worth reading!