The Fates of Evil Men

I am going to start this article by believing the premise that a team of US army SEALS, acting under president Obama’s specific instructions, did indeed raid a compound in Pakistan last Monday and shot the world’s most wanted terrorist, when the elderly invalid was unarmed and eminently capturable.

I am going to accept that the soldiers took photographs of the corpse, to prove he was dead but that these were later considered too gruesome to release, because they might antagonise his supporters even more than their tender sensibilities might be inflamed by widely circulated film of Infidel youth celebrating the assassination of an unarmed middle aged cleric. (what other explanation could there be?!)

Going further, and for the purpose of argument, I will believe that DNA tests were carried out which showed a direct link with one of the bin Laden’s sisters. The authorities were, no doubt, able to conclusively rule out the possibility they had accidentally shot one of the many other bin Laden brothers instead of Osama.

I will not question the claim that the US administration assumed that quickly chucking the body of the FBI’s most wanted felon into the sea within 24 hours of his death, and before announcing that death to the world, would not raise any suspicions whatsoever.  I am sure that they truly believed that burial at sea was “in accordance with Islamic tradition” (whereas, in fact, burial at sea is only permissible when it is not possible to bury the body in earth before decomposition sets in – which was not a factor in this case)

I will even struggle to accept that the al Quada leader did indeed make home movies of the back of his own head as he watched himself on TV, from time to time zooming in on his own ear as he did so. It follows that the dishevelled and rather pathetic looking figure in the videos released a few days ago was indeed OBL and not some lookie-likie Arab-American from Battle Creek, Nebraska, flown in specially.

Whilst I am in the mood to extend credibility to lengths which would challenge Ping the Elastic Man, I will also believe that it is merely coincidence that the successful climax of the nine and a half year search for Osama bin Laden coincided so closely with President Obama being forced to publish a rather dubious looking document purporting to be his Hawaian birth certificate, whilst the President’s approval ratings were heading below sea level, and that extremely suspicious conflict in Libya was starting to settle into an uncomfortable and very long stalemate.
                                                                 
More difficult for me is accepting the word of the current US Attorney General Eric Holder, a man who makes Alberto Gonzalez appear a paragon of truth and honesty, when he assures us that the killing was not an “assassination”, but heck, if I’ve gone this far, I may as well go the whole hog, as they say.

Not everybody is rejoicing at the death. Various, Mullahs, jihadis and tenured university professors aside, the arch Bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams confesses to a degree of queasiness over the shooting of an unarmed man. However, Rowan has a queasy reaction to so many things it is hard to take his moralising very seriously.

Despite Rowan’s nervous stomach, and any quibbling over the legal definition of what took place, the American government takes the view that they were entirely justified in taking out Osama bin Laden. Assuming, as I have for the purpose of this article, that rather than blowing him to smithereens in Tora Bora in 2002, they really did take him out last week, and then chuck him in the sea, bizarre as that may sound.

In that case, many might conclude that they were justified in that view, and I certainly find myself feeling sympathetic to that argument. Bin laden was the self confessed mastermind of violent acts of terrorism which left many American citizens dead, a man who embraced the ideology of violent insurrection against those he viewed as the oppressors of his people, and someone who was the inspiration for others who went on to commit acts of terrible cruelty and barbarism.

Of course, one might be able to argue the something similar about individuals currently employed, on an elected basis, within the Northern Ireland Assembly, and of course, even more so, about one internationally revered elder statesman, currently enjoying a luxurious retirement in South Africa.

It is true many thousands more died in the World trade centre in 2001 than were killed in the Church Street bombing in 1983, which Mandela freely admits he approved.  However, the victims of Church Street were no less dead, and neither were the 130 left with varying degrees of horrific injury any less the victims of terrorism just because they were attacked in Pretoria rather than New York.

If numbers of victims are anything to go by, although worldwide al Quada has killed more, the ANC, under Nelson Mandela’s leadership were responsible for the violent deaths of far greater numbers of South African citizens, mostly black, than the number of American citizens killed by a bin Laden led al Quada. By the most conservative estimate the ratio is almost seven to one. (and the killing still continues)

Hence if the US government is justified in “taking out” Osama bin-laden in 2011, why would the pre-1990 National government of South Africa not have been justified in “taking out” Nelson Mandela?  Both men led terrorist organisations both were equally guilty of orchestrating acts of violent terrorism against states which they perceived as oppressors, resulting in the deaths of many thousands of innocent citizens.

These are men of blood with much blood on their hands, it is only the fashionable prejudice of the world, and the outcomes which they faced which differentiates the two.  One, reviled by the West, and dead at 54, now, allegedly, feeds the fishes of the Pakistani coast, the other, still thriving and applauded in his 10th decade, is held up to our children a some form of living saint.       

When I wrote the article “Mandela the legend and the legacy” I started by saying that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, very little illustrates that point more clearly than the differing fates of Osama bin Laden and Nelson Mandela.