Noam Chomsky: What we should have done after 9/11

[calybe]

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.

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Comments

[calybe]

There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that was a boast, not a confession, with as much credibility as my "confession" that I won the Boston marathon. The boast tells us a lot about his character, but nothing about his responsibility for what he regarded as a great achievement, for which he wanted to take credit.

What Chomsky is arguing is that Bin Laden should have been put on trial and not simply assassinated as then those who question whether he really was the mastermind behind 9/11 could get some clarification. As he said in the article, the US has said it has evidence against him, but has not revealed it, which leads to a lot of conspiracy theories and further radicalisation. I think perhaps some people would finally obtain the closure they needed after it as well.

Even the Nazis in the Nuremberg trial were detained and given a trial for the atrocities they committed as stated in this part of the article: We might also do well to recall Jackson's eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

A more recent example would be Mubarak going under trial, despite all the evil he has done, even thought the people could have just as easily killed him.