I've been asked to contribute this year to a
Truthfully, I'm only posting this because I wrote it in 10 minutes and am quite proud of my efforts. And also because I managed to reference the Snuggie in an article about Bin Laden.
Imagine how big my ego would be if I was actually successful.
BIN LADEN, BIG DEAL
The capture of Osama Bin Laden was the perhaps America’s best chance to recapture what global sympathy and moral triumph it had gained and squandered within a year of September 11. But all that potential to regain a title as a true defender of individual liberty and the rule of the law went down with Osama’s body in the Arabian Sea. Never mind that Osama had a gun or a human shield in his wife – surely the US troops that stormed his compound had many more of them. If internet footage of Osama curled up in a snuggie watching classic clips of himself on Al Jazeera is anything to go by, the old geezer had nothing on these guys.
Some – or rather many, judging by the streets of Washington immediately after the announcement– celebrated the ‘big deal’ of killing the man over whom the United States (and the world) lost face, an entire decade and trillions of dollars in the War on Terror. The true ‘big deal’ however comes from the little-recognised triumph from an American and even International rule of law the States would have observed in putting Public Enemy Number One to trial as they might have done with any ordinary or even extra-ordinary criminal (just don’t mention Guantanamo). Taking this higher ground would have been the softer, but more difficult step.
The rule of the law is contingent on us taking such difficult steps to higher moral ground, but such is fragility of the rule of the law and our descent into arbitrariness if not even a superpower can follow it.
The Bin Laden trial could have been the Nuremberg Trial/s of the twenty first century, the trial that Hitler or Pol Pot were never but should have been put through. No matter what the outcome, keeping Osama alive would have inspired years of intense, heated, and most importantly, intelligent debate, for generations to come.
Whether or not he would have been sentence to life or death, the Bin Laden case would have been permanent fixtures in law school programmes, curriculums in general, and the agendas of the intelligentsia the world over. Instead, we sit at home scouring Wikileaks, YouTube, or Google Image for dud and less-dud photos.
The bigger deal, then, is what the lawless assassination of Osama says about what wider society has become in the aftermath of September 11. The twin towers may have been the only fixtures to fall on that fateful day, but in the years since then a general respect for the rule of law, civil liberties and good taste have also taken a tumble.
Bin Laden’s death is significant not because of what it produced but because of what was lost when his body was gunned down and thrown out to sea. The little that has changed (except Obama’s approval rating) in death, as opposed to all that could have been in life, is testament to what was lost with Osama's body.
Whatever we did, or what we could have done with Bin Laden, was America’s biggest and best chance to rebuild what had collapsed not just on but because of September 11.
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