Good or bad news, depending on your perspective, the CD Times is not dead! Although, for the time being, it will shift its focus from travel related posts and deal more with internation news and development topics. In that vein, my good friend Ben has agreed to share a guest post. Ben is a Brit who has chosen to live in the US after extensive work in both the UK and the Middle East (specifically the UAE). Hope you find his thoughts provocative (yep, that is the word I wanted to use). Take it away Ben:
It was with one eyebrow raised that I digested media coverage of recent events in the Middle East: Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, etc.
When it was the turn of Egypt, at first there was jubilation at the imminent collapse of a brutal, unfair dictatorship and a move to a more democratic society. That’s good, right? One of the secondary benefits of the ludicrously-named “war on terror” was always supposed to be facilitating regime change. But, hold on! That brutal, unfair dictatorship had been helpful to us in maintaining our agenda of protecting Israel. Then the hand-wringing began – is it better to have a brutal, unfair dictatorship that does what we want, or a lovely democracy that might decide that it won’t do what we want? Heavens, what a choice! Time to roll out the (mostly ill-informed) pundits to tell us that there would be a good chance that something called the Muslim Brotherhood might be in charge. That doesn’t sound good, does it, children!? Never mind any material facts about the M.B.; the facts have no place on prime-time current affairs shows.
And now we’ve whacked bin Laden. While he was a ghastly man, I can’t be happy about his killing.
Let’s make no bones: this killing is the death penalty without a trial. And, more broadly, there should be a level of discomfort with any nation deciding to enter another nation’s territory’s and knock off people it doesn’t like (even for compelling reasons). What next – an Iraqi is entitled to whack Donald Rumsfeld for the 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq? The Colombians going to London and taking out an anti-drug campaigner who threatens the profitability of the cocaine trade? Anyone can go to Nigeria and kill an internet service provider for facilitating the spam that annoys us all? (GL: Actually...)
The press in the United States have glossed over the fundamental issue of whether the killing was morally right, and legally ...ahem…executed, in order to speculate on Pakistan’s knowledge of bin Laden’s presence.
Let’s examine this in a historical context. At the end of the second World War, the British were in favor of summary executions for the Nazi leadership. President Truman – not a man given to weak-will; he ordered the dropping of atomic bombs, after all – responded thus:
“[Summary execution] would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride. The only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear”
So it brings us back to the conversation about Egypt and democratic rights. We have fulfilled the mission in Afghanistan; to bring bin Laden to justice. Now we can come home, one expects? We’ve toppled the government that gave Al-Qaida a safe haven, and implemented some crude democracy (let’s gloss over the thousands of innocent dead for a moment). But what if the Afghan people choose a government which advocates anti-U.S. policies?
And how does that square with the intervention previously exerted by the United States in overthrowing democratic regimes to install dictatorships with a direct line to the CIA?
What a conundrum.
When it was the turn of Egypt, at first there was jubilation at the imminent collapse of a brutal, unfair dictatorship and a move to a more democratic society. That’s good, right? One of the secondary benefits of the ludicrously-named “war on terror” was always supposed to be facilitating regime change. But, hold on! That brutal, unfair dictatorship had been helpful to us in maintaining our agenda of protecting Israel. Then the hand-wringing began – is it better to have a brutal, unfair dictatorship that does what we want, or a lovely democracy that might decide that it won’t do what we want? Heavens, what a choice! Time to roll out the (mostly ill-informed) pundits to tell us that there would be a good chance that something called the Muslim Brotherhood might be in charge. That doesn’t sound good, does it, children!? Never mind any material facts about the M.B.; the facts have no place on prime-time current affairs shows.
And now we’ve whacked bin Laden. While he was a ghastly man, I can’t be happy about his killing.
Let’s make no bones: this killing is the death penalty without a trial. And, more broadly, there should be a level of discomfort with any nation deciding to enter another nation’s territory’s and knock off people it doesn’t like (even for compelling reasons). What next – an Iraqi is entitled to whack Donald Rumsfeld for the 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq? The Colombians going to London and taking out an anti-drug campaigner who threatens the profitability of the cocaine trade? Anyone can go to Nigeria and kill an internet service provider for facilitating the spam that annoys us all? (GL: Actually...)
The press in the United States have glossed over the fundamental issue of whether the killing was morally right, and legally ...ahem…executed, in order to speculate on Pakistan’s knowledge of bin Laden’s presence.
Let’s examine this in a historical context. At the end of the second World War, the British were in favor of summary executions for the Nazi leadership. President Truman – not a man given to weak-will; he ordered the dropping of atomic bombs, after all – responded thus:
“[Summary execution] would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride. The only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear”
So it brings us back to the conversation about Egypt and democratic rights. We have fulfilled the mission in Afghanistan; to bring bin Laden to justice. Now we can come home, one expects? We’ve toppled the government that gave Al-Qaida a safe haven, and implemented some crude democracy (let’s gloss over the thousands of innocent dead for a moment). But what if the Afghan people choose a government which advocates anti-U.S. policies?
And how does that square with the intervention previously exerted by the United States in overthrowing democratic regimes to install dictatorships with a direct line to the CIA?
What a conundrum.
I love the Truman quote. Pretty solid. I had no idea that the British were in favor of executions. But until we hear more about the circumstances of bin Laden's death, can we say it was an execution? Hard to say what happened in there. I do wish our record of intervention were better. Ugh.
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