Author: Andrew Marshall
Publication: New Zealand
Herald
Date: August 28, 2000
WASHINGTON - He was Public
Enemy Number One. His bearded face stared at us from newspapers, magazine
covers and the television - the evil genius who threatened the United States
and all civilised nations: Osama bin Laden.
It is two years since
the US launched missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation
for the bombs which destroyed its embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Operation Infinite Reach
aimed at targets linked to bin Laden; and the US led a campaign to bring
him to justice, a campaign which is still under way. But in carrying out
that crusade, justice is precisely what has been put in question.
Ask Salah Idris. Idris
owned the pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum that the US blew up with cruise
missiles on the pretext that it was being used to produce the precursors
for VX nerve gas, a horrifying weapon that might be used against Americans.
No satisfactory evidence has been produced to show that it was.
The US alleged that Idris
was an associate of bin Laden, and froze his bank accounts - bank accounts
held in London by a US bank.
When he threatened to
sue, they rapidly unfroze the accounts. But they refused to back down on
their accusations.
Idris has never been
indicted or tried. But when senior American Government officials speak,
anonymously, of his guilt, there is no accountability; and Idris is effectively
convicted in the court of public opinion without a chance to speak.
There are several other
people sitting in a grim building in New York in a similar position, the
indicted suspects charged with the embassy bombings.
They are held in total
isolation in the notorious 10 South unit of the New York Correctional Centre
under what are euphemistically called Special Administrative Measures.
Perhaps they are guilty;
perhaps they are not. They have not had their day in court and there is
little sign that they will do for some time. There is a solid body of US
legislation authorising extreme measures against "terrorists."
A series of top-secret
US Presidential Decision Directives authorise striking back at suspects
wherever and however the US chooses: Infinite Reach.
The 1996 Anti-terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act established a new court charged with hearing
cases in which the Government seeks to deport aliens accused of engaging
in terrorist activity based on secret evidence submitted in the form of
classified information.
The secret evidence has
always been used against Arab or Muslim suspects. It has frequently been
overturned. There is little sign that the bin Laden cases are going anywhere.
According to the public
record, none of the informants involved in the case have direct knowledge
of bin Laden's involvement. But then for those involved in this operation,
evidence, apparently, is of little concern.
"We should have a very
low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass
destruction being used against American citizens," Richard Clarke, America's
top counter-terrorism official, told the Washington Post.
Clarke led the missile
attacks in 1998. From virtually nothing, he has built up a huge powerbase
in Washington, aimed at this new threat of international terrorism, which
supposedly poses the greatest single threat to the lives and liberty of
Americans.
A congressional report
this week says that the presence of bin Laden operatives in Jordan and
Lebanon suggests his organisation may be planning bombings and other attacks
on neighbouring Israel.
Clarke "compares the
current threat of global terrorism with the situation faced by Western
democracies in the period leading up to the Second World War, when appeasement
carried the day," noted the Post.
The war on terrorism
has become an all-consuming passion for some in Washington in the last
few years, the new "clear and present danger" against which they will "pay
any price, bear any burden," as American Presidents once said of Communism.
But this is about more than just a threat.
It is about bureaucratic
infighting in Washington, for a start. Since the end of the Cold War, there
has been a struggle to define a new enemy (and the money and power needed
to fight it) and Clarke has come out on top.
From Oliver North's old
office at the National Security Council, he masterminds US counter-terrorism
operations, reliving the dream of NSC officials since the 1950s of turning
the institution into the operational arm of US defence and intelligence.
Clarke, a little-known
figure even within Washington, more than anyone else has also been responsible
for raising the spectre of an "electronic Pearl Harbour," a devastating
assault by hackers on computer systems.
"Why would anyone want
to mount such an attack?" asked the New York Times, but Clarke had an easy
answer. "To extort us," he told the newspaper. "To intimidate us!"
There have been plenty
of "life or death" struggles like this over the years, directed by strange
men in dark little Washington offices with odd agendas and little accountability.
The "war on drugs," for
example, that incredibly counter-productive US policy in South America
and the streets of its cities; J. Edgar Hoover's fanatical crusade against
communism; or Oliver North's "neat idea" for funding the Contras in Central
America. In each case, the "ends justified the means" except that in the
end, they did not.
The claim to international
leadership which the US makes at the beginning of the 21st century is a
strong one. But it relies, crucially, on moral leadership - on persuading
others that it has right as well as might on its side.
Without that, it still
has Block III Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Carrier Battle Groups and Marine
Expeditionary Units, but it will lose the fight.
And who is really the
greater threat to freedom in America: Osama bin Laden or Richard Clarke?
The "crusade" against
terrorism and the "Islamic menace" has led American officials - all too
willingly -into illiberal and unacceptable measures.
America wanted, and wants
justice for those murdered in the embassy bombings. But the way they have
gone about pursuing justice has involved the US in some unjust actions
of its own.
It is not just pious
liberalism to say that, even when pursuing terrorism, two wrongs do not
make a right. Ends do not justify means.
"This will be a long,
ongoing struggle," said President Bill Clinton after the embassy bombings,
"between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism."
No one could disagree;
but America needs to remember which side of that struggle it is on.
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=149068&thesection=news&thesubsection=world)
