Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: USA

Killing Osama bin Laden – morality and international law

I have heard many opinions about the ‘assassination’ of Osama bin Laden since his death was announced.

I wrote a few days ago that it had to be done but I cannot rejoice at any man’s death.

I also said there may be a reaction from the upholders of international law who may deem the USA’s actions as illegal.

Let’s look at the morality of an operation which the USA said was a kill and capture mission. There was no question of capturing him alive. As a captive he would have to be tried in a criminal court. This would be the trial of the century.

Any trial would probably lead to hostage taking, reprisal mock trials, huge security and expense.

We all know the result of any such trial.

bin Laden was guilty by his own confession.

So what would be the sentence?

If tried in the USA the sentence would surely be death.

If tried in an international court, the sentence would be life – that would be problematical.

bin Laden led an organisation dedicated to murdering innocent people all over the world.  In the USA alone he killed more than 2000 people at the World Trade Center and in Washington. He threatened again and again to keep killing until the West left Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel was destroyed. His version of political Islam is dedicated to the overthrow of Western civilisation and the spread of this ideology throughout the world.

bin Laden and al Qaeda had declared war on the West and the USA in particular. He was totally ruthless in his intention to prosecute that war.

In conventional warfare, “taking out” an enemy leader is considered a legitimate and legal act of war.

The problem many people, like the Archibishop of Canterbury, have with this particular killing, is that they do not see it as a military operation in a war zone; bin Laden was not in uniform, was not armed, was “at home”, with his family.

It is this domestic environment, albeit in a fortress complex, which gives people moral qualms.

Those that have these qualms seek either to take a morally superior position or they want to convince us that, despite bin Laden’s obvious crimes, nevertheless the rule of law has primacy.

Both the moralists and the legalists are telling us, in their own way, that our civilisation can only retain its moral superiority to the likes of bin Laden if we observe the very rules, laws and mores which underpin that civilisation.

I understand what they are saying and I have some sympathy for this point of view. The argument is that we defend our civilisation by acting only in ways which reinforce that sense that our civilisation is superior, and that keeping to this strict moral and legal code is essential to its survival and our self-respect; our moral “soul”. In brief, the argument is that we should not “lower” ourselves to the level of the enemy.

I think they are wrong.

And one of the reasons I think they are wrong is the Israeli paradigm.

Israel has always regarded terrorists and terrorist leaders as valid targets – often characterised as “extra-judicial killings” by Israel’s detractors and enemies and also by NGOs.

Israel is in a paradigmatic situation to the USA and the West. It is involved in “asymmetric warfare” where the norms of the rules of war are problematic.

I’m not an international lawyer or an authority on the rules of warfare, but Israel, facing an existential threat since its birth, has engaged in assassination which is ultimately aimed at protecting its citizens. Does Israel put the welfare of its citizens first or does international law as interpreted in relation to conventional warfare trump these considerations?

It is clear that Israel has made that decision. Israel is prepared to take opportunities, where their intelligence offers, to kill the leaders of Hamas and other enemies who are at war with Israel in everything but name.

The terrorists do not observe a single rule of war; not the Geneva Conventions, not international laws of conflict – nothing.

Yet Israel, and in the bin Laden case, the USA are actually challenged and their actions questioned.

Not only are we now in a phase of history where warfare is not necessarily between national  actors, but that war is not a conventional war over territory or tribalism, it is a war of a particular ideology, a political religious ideology, against the rest of the world and the West in particular.

In these circumstances I believe that international laws of warfare are inadequate. States have a right to protect themselves from ruthless killers and genocidal maniacs who might even equip themselves with WMD.

Of course, there is great danger in my suggestion. After all, do the Western democracies alone have the right to abandon or break or stretch international law and the rules of warfare? If they arrogate this right to themselves alone, could not the other nations of the world equally arrogate rights which are inimical to the West’s moral codes andethics?

Isn’t the point of international law that states who may have different political, moral and ethical systems and traditions all sign up to a common set of rules?

What right does any one country have to flout these laws?

Sounds like I’m having second thoughts or talking myself out of my original conclusion?

No.

Any country that has a civilisational or existential threat against it has to make decisions and take risks to protect itself. In conventional wars state actors take unconventional actions, even illegal actions, to protect themselves with covert operations.

The West is facing an unconventional, unprecedented threat. The USA had every right to consider bin Laden an enemy combatant and a leader of an enemy army. What was more moral: to kill him or allow him to kill thousands of others? What was more moral: killing him or capturing him and risking the lives of the Navy Seals?

It’s exactly the same for Israel: kill an enemy combatant with an airstrike that may also kill innocents or allow him to continue to kill Israeli innocents?

The USA did the right and moral thing

Arab democracy, Western hypocrisy

I’ve been thinking (dangerous), musing, reading and self-questioning. In other words, a normal day.

What is at the forefront of our minds and our TV screens at the moment is the unfolding drama of Egypt.

I have been struck, somewhat unexpectedly, by a sort of epiphany; a moment when I can see politicians and diplomacy for what they are.

I have been infuriated by the utter hypocrisy of Egypt’s western allies, the vaunted western democracies and the news media.

First Obama, who like his predecessors, has supported Mubarak and his awful regime. He believed that stability in the region required Egypt to work with the US, (who payed billions to maintain the regime and prop up its military) as a bulwark against Islamism. He believed that this long-held strategy would prevent a regional implosion and, ultimately preserve the peace between Israel and Egypt. Well, it worked, didn’t it? For more than 30 years.

Obama was not alone, of course; like everyone else he did not believe that democracy could be born from an Arab womb without a strong US midwife (Iraq, Afghanistan) and a sturdy pair of forceps.

Governments have to work with regimes they might not approve of, but the West has long supported or at least tolerated dictators only to turn against them at the slightest sniff of the outbreak of democracy, or more often when their own interests have changed.

This was not so much a sniff but a full-blown bout of influenza. Obama turned against Mubarak and declared he wanted to see a smooth transition of power according to the will of the Egyptian people; a will he had not believed existed and which now he applauded.

Where was his support and that of the western democracies for the will of the Egyptian people before? What did he or any other western democracy ever do to encourage democracy in countries suffering under dictators?  All the US ever did was invade and militarily intervene to impose their national will and their idea of democracy on Iraq, Afghanistan and before this Vietnam. One could also mention Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada.

OK. I don’t want to bash the US, but as the leaders of the free world their foreign policy was often guided by fear; it used to be Communism, now it’s Islamism. In this Internet era, maybe a tweet or a leak is as powerful as an ICBM or an armoured division.

Outside of the Monroe Doctrine area, Europe has always gone along with their ally. Perhaps only in Yugoslavia where the battle was about preventing genocide and stabilising Europe did the West get it right, despite many mistakes.

Perhaps events like those in Egypt show us that international politics is really about self-interest and is governed by a hefty dose of Realpolitk; if the dictator is on your side, prop him up, if he is against you, undermine, attack, invade. There is no true morality in international politics, only the pretence of it.

The problem with this approach is most apparent when your client, or unsavoury dictator friend, falls from grace, and  this is particularly embarrassing when your guy is replaced by a democracy; just the sort of government you should have been supporting all along.

Governments like the UK and the USA then have to come up with some platitudes and become imperiously statesmanlike and request, guide, coerce their former ally to fall on his sword so they can greet with fanfare the new government, the one they always really wanted, a government of the people, a true democracy which they now support and expect to continue with relations as normal.

So, when this new democracy comes into being it is not surprising that those governments who supported its predecessor are not exactly flavour of the month.

Well, we don’t have a democracy in Egypt yet, but if we do, then the US and its allies will have some explaining to do, which it has already decided to do by offering a few billion dollars in aid.

Am I being too cynical?

Such is political life. Hypocrisy is sort-of built-in.

And, of course, nowhere is Israel held up as the only democracy in the Middle East; in fact, today, I heard someone on a news programme looking forward to Egypt being the FIRST democracy in the region.

What region is that? North Africa?

Egypt and the Web 2.0 revolution

Who cannot be moved by the images coming out of Egypt and especially Tahrir Square in Cairo over the past 3 weeks.

Who can fail to be impressed by the dignity and self-control, the patriotism and the aspiration. after all, don’t we all want democracy everywhere?

What we have witnessed is a new type of revolution. The precursors of this revolution have been the Iranian protests about the allegedly rigged re-election of President Ahmadinejad, the popular protests in Tunisia which ousted the incumbent president and even the student protests in the UK over student fees.

Copycat uprisings have also sprung up in Jordan and Algeria with little impact so far.

Is this a new dawn of democracy for the Middle East?

As many commentators have observed, these popular uprisings and protests have been co-ordinated by young people using social media and mobile devices.

This is seismic because in the Brave New World of cyber- protest and revolt, political agitation and organising, it is the youth of the world (and the Arab world is a particularly young demographic) who are setting the pace, upsetting old norms and paradigms and leveraging their knowledge of social media and the World Wide Web to attempt to sweep away the former centres of power.

This new-found power is bad news for dictators and tyrants. Democracies can absorb it and even use it. Authoritarian societies which try to suppress the freedom of information and control the press are finding it increasingly difficult to outwit those members of their societies who find on the Internet an outlet for grievance and an access to the truth.

The media has presented us with well-spoken, western-dressed, young, savvy Egyptians who give us hope that Egypt can find its way to true democracy and  provide inspiration for other oppressed people in the Middle East and beyond.

Yet, all this could still go wrong. The new military government has confirmed the existing treaty with Israel but has now suspended the Constitution. What will that mean?

If democracy is established, can it be sustained? Will Egypt become a second Iraq where its very freedom will, ironically, allow dark forces, those of fundamentalism, to infiltrate from home and abroad and pitch the country into turmoil? Will the spirit of settling old scores, now apparent, throw the country in an internecine struggle.

Can Egypt divest itself of the antisemitism that is so pervasive?

And finally, those sophisticated representatives of Egyptian society who spoke so well  in front of the world’s cameras are the educated minority of Egypt’s middle classes and ruling elite.

On the street there are millions of impoverished and disinherited Egyptians whose leanings and inclinations may be more in the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially if there aspirations and expectations are not met in good order.

Will Egyptian democracy be good for Israel? I would say ‘yes’ were it not for the clear underlying and sometimes overt demonstrations of anti-Israel sentiment and the known dislike of Israel and the Jews that is so endemic in Egyptian society.

If the miracle does happen, an Israel-Egypt alliance would be a powerful force for peace and democracy in the region.

Somehow, I feel it will be more complex and dangerous than the euphoric media now expect.