THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF OSAMA BIN LADIN

First posted 24 May 2011

In Australia and around the rest of the world much has been spoken and written of the death of Osama bin Laden over the weeks since his demise at the hands of a specialised group of US Marines. Geoffrey Robertson QC, the well known Australian International Lawyer, amongst others, has accused the US of summary execution without trial or judgment. I don’t know whether Robertson is correct. I’ll leave that to the lawyers. More importantly, do I feel justice has been done? I don’t know. I don’t feel any better. His death does nothing to wash the blood from his hands or to restore the thousands of innocent lives he snuffed out summarily.

It is hard to feel any sympathy for OBL. All the hand wringing in the world; all the legal argument; all the waling will not assuage for me the images of those hijacked jet aeroplanes hitting the Twin Towers buildings and the haunted faces of the rescuers. It can never erase from my memory the faces of three pretty, intelligent and innocent young girls I had spoken to only a few short weeks before whose burnt and bloodied bodies were subsequently pulled from the wreckage of a bar in Kuta. OBL had a good hand in all of that.

Robertson theorises that the US may have simply carried out a cold-bloodied assassination of bin Laden and argues further that a better resolution would have been an arrest and a public trial. Whether a public trial could have produced a fair result in America anyway is debatable but regardless OBL had to first be arrested. Whether he could have been is also up for debate.

At 1.00 in the morning with little moon light a special forces military unit of the United States armed with M4 carbines and wearing night vision goggles mounted a raid on a fortified compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan. Apparently they were selected from the Navy Seals which is a specialised section of Marines who are trained for these types of operations. I have never seen the Seals in action and probably never will but it goes without saying that they don’t sound like a group of hail fellows well met who always ask questions first before taking action. At 1.00am it was dark. The Seals were unlikely to stop to turn on the lights in the compound and by any measure they were met with resistance of a nature that required the use of their own weapons.

I figure the Seals were expecting to have to shoot at someone and shoot they did. Someone who was known as the courier fired an AK47 at them so they shot and killed him before he managed to shoot one of the Seals. If it was me, I would have figured that no-one was likely to greet me with open arms. I would have assumed that they had weapons and were prepared to use them. In fairness to my children I think I would have been prepared to shoot OBL first and have a better look afterwards. I’m confident my children would support that view and I’m also confident so would any children of the Seals. Come home Dad, preferably alive.

The rest is history. Of course the United States always knew they were on a hiding to nothing. Regardless of the outcome, criticism of the US would have been mandatory. Rarely do they get much support from their allies never mind their sworn enemies. The US could well have been excused if they had spread the body of OBL with excrement before setting fire to it and throwing it into the sea but they did not do that. They provided his remains with a proper Muslim send off. Some will probably say this is not so but it would require a conspiracy of the nature of a conspired moon landing to pull that off. No, OBL received what he never considered for any of his victims, a proper, decent burial.

What was Osama bin Ladin? Was he a freedom fighter as he is often portrayed by his supporters? No, he was not. He was a wealthy, spoiled and privileged young man, angry because Infidels had dared to set foot on Arab soil during the 1^st Gulf War. Who was he fighting to free? The answer is, no-one. His one motivation was revenge. His purpose was no more than the rancorous outpourings of a spoiled child who couldn’t get his own way and sought to harm as many people as he could to bring his tormentors to heel. The pity is that he had the means to carry it out so effectively.

Am I sorry he is dead? Not for a minute. Do I think he should have received a fair trial? I couldn’t give a stuff. Do I think the world has taken a moral step backwards due to the appearance of summary justice being doled out to this malignant murderous bastard? I’m not too concerned. We’ve done much worse and recovered.

John R Long