It starts out as one of those nagging feelings in the back of your mind.
There’s something wrong here. Something very wrong. But, you keep your mouth shut. You just can’t quite put two and two together. If you criticize the action, you risk a rabid response of being an apologist and a supporter of an accused mass murderer.
Yet, that nagging feeling persists. There’s something very wrong here. Osama Bin Laden is dead. As he should be. But, it just doesn’t mesh with what we’ve been told for our entire lives about how things are supposed to work. The accused are always supposed to be afforded a trial, where they may confront the evidence and witnesses against them.
Then at 5:00am on a Saturday morning, it hits you like a pitcher of cold water, rousing you from a dead sleep.
After World War II, captured Nazi officials and officers were captured and put on trial at Nuremburg. Many were hanged, and others got long prison sentences. But, that’s not the point here.
After the war, a high ranking official named Adolph Eichmann escaped arrest and fled to South America. this was a man, whose bureaucratic efficiency in genocide made Osama Bin Laden look like a rank amateur. He sent millions to their deaths like clockwork. And he was frustrated that he wasn’t killing enough Jews.
The Mossad tracked Eichmann down in Argentina in 1960. They tracked his routine and his movements for weeks. An assassination would have been fairly easy for experienced commandos. Eichmann had a standard routine. He took the bus to and from work each day, and had a walk of several blocks, in the dark, to reach his home. A knife in the back, or a couple of silenced .22 cal slugs in the back of the head, and vengeance is taken.
But, the Israeli’s knew they had a teachable moment here. Drag him back to Israel, and put him on public trial for his crimes. Let the world see first hand what a monster was lurking in their midst.
They did, and they hung him. The teachable lesson was, that the rule of law can prevail. Criminals can be brought to justice the right way. Even executed for their crimes.
Now, back to this week. We tracked down Osama Bin Laden to a villa in Pakistan. We monitored the situation from a safe house for months. We sent a team of commandos in, who encountered little resistance, and according to recent accounts, shot and killed Bin Laden. We then flew the body out and tossed it into the sea.
Now what type of an international precedent did we just set? We just told the whole world, that the rule of law does not apply, as far as we’re concerned. It’s like the International Conventions Against Torture. That law is in place to protect our soldiers in case of capture. And we agree to abide by it to avoid retaliation.
Now, just suppose that the Vietnamese, or the Cambodians, or the Timorese, or especially the Chileans, decided to issue a warrant for crimes against humanity against Henry Kissinger. If we fail to turn him over for trial, are they justified in assassinating him?
Suppose a new Iraqi government wants George W. Bush? Suppose Nicaragua decides it would like to hold a trial for Oliver North, John Poindexter, or Elliot Abrams?
Suppose that a dictator like Augusto Pinochet wanted to put Orlando Letelier on trial for trumped up charges? Would that lead to car bombs going off in Washington DC? Oh, wait.
And that’s where that nagging feeling comes from. This isn’t what my country is supposed to be about. We’re supposed to be better than that. We’re supposed to be a beacon of freedom and the rule of law. Not a rogue state that takes the law into it’s own hands.
We’re not supposed to be the new Pinochet. If Israel could afford Eichmann a trial, we should have at least tried to do the same.
