-Caveat Lector- http://www.time.com/time/europe/eu/printout/0,9869,176400,00.html
Sunday, September 30, 2001 The Case Against a Case Why the U.S. doesn't need proof to go after bin Laden BY ROMESH RATNESAR The Taliban are perfectly willing to hand over Osama bin Laden. They just want proof that he's guilty. That was the position Afghanistan's rulers staked out last week when they refused to accede to the international community's demand that bin Laden be given up. "If America has proof," said Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, "we are ready for the trial of Osama Bin Laden in light of the evidence." Who could take such a remark seriously? Here was a regime that summarily massacres thousands of the local people, publicly executes those suspected of adultery and homosexuality and prohibits women from working outside the home, suddenly playing the part of international human-rights lawyers. Such disingenousness fooled no one — no one, that is, except Britain's liberal media, which quickly took up the Taliban's case. "We await conclusive evidence," the editors of The Independent wrote Sunday, "that Osama bin Laden was the architect of the appalling attacks in New York and Washington." The left-wing Observer intoned with similar skepticism: "We must accept that a credible finger of suspicion points to Osama bin Laden," an editorial said, almost reluctantly. "But suspicion and burden of proof are very different issues." The demand for "proof" of bin Laden's culpability has become the most potent card in the anti-retaliation camp's deck. It allows opponents of American action to position themselves as the true champions of liberalism and Western values — and the noble idea that suspects are innocent before being proved guilty — while still professing horror at the atrocity itself. Most in the "show me the evidence" crowd don't publicly question the validity of an American response; they simply say the U.S. should wait until it knows for certain that bin Laden was behind the atrocities. They claim their demands are simple: the U.S. merely has to finish its investigation into the deadliest and most complex crime ever committed on American soil, gather incontrovertible evidence of bin Laden's guilt, and then make all of that available to the public. Then, and only then, the Administration can start talking about retaliation. Is that too much to ask? The anti-Americanists know the answer already. Their aim is to raise the threshold for American action to unattainable heights. Such a position may be legally defensible; but it is also willfully naive, strategically uninformed and morally dishonest. You could already hear the conspiracists murmur with delight when Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday that the U.S. would not be able to go public with all of the evidence against bin Laden. He has good reasons for holding back: making too much evidence public would reveal sensitive details about the investigation and compromise intelligence sources. That would play into the hands of future terrorists, who could use such information to root out informants and better conceal plans for a future attack. Most people in the world accept the proposition that a certain amount of government secrecy, in these parlous times, might be necessary to protect national security. Not America's opponents on the left, who reflexively dismiss the possibility that the U.S. might act in good faith. In fact, even if Powell were to publish a Starr Report worth of documents implicating bin Laden, the anti-Americanists still wouldn't buy it. A perfect capsule of the left's cyncism could be found in George Monbiot's column yesterday in the Guardian, which all but accused investigators of planting two key pieces of evidence — the rental car at the Boston airport, believed to belong to the hijackers, that contained a copy of the Koran and flight manuals; and the passport of one of the alleged hijackers, found at the World Trade Center site. "I can't help suspecting that intelligence agents have assembled the theory first, then sought the facts required to fit it ... I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against bin Laden with a measure of skepticism." Not that Monbiot produces any exculpatory evidence himself. He needs only to raise the slightest doubt about the U.S.'s case in order to justify a screed against Bush's "gigantic death squad, dispatched to enact extrajudicial executions." What Monbiot and the rest of the anti-retaliation left know all to well is that the U.S. will probably never find discrete evidence linking bin Laden to the Trade Center attacks. His al-Qaeda network is too disparate, its methods too craven, its communications too inchoate to ever construct a convincing paper trail. It is unlikely investigators will find documents or cell-phone records or secret videotapes that place bin Laden at the center of the plot. The man has eluded capture for so long precisely because he avoids doing anything that leaves behind a traceable record. And much of the evidence against bin Laden surely went with the murderous hijackers to their graves. But so what? The fundamental weakness of the left's argument is that waiting — "justice requires patience, and infinite justice requires infinite patience," Monbiot snarkily writes — until you have proof somehow shows the West's decency, humanity and righteousness. But in the real world, waiting for proof can also be an immoral act. One of the most common excuses made by the U.S. for not intervening to stop the Rwandan genocide was the lack of conclusive proof against the Hutu government; by the time the West felt it had enough evidence, 800,000 Tutsis were dead. In cases where the U.S. has intervened, the government was not always aware the full guilt of their enemies. American leaders did not have credible knowlege of the Holocaust until well after it declared war on Germany. The Observer argues that "part of the virtue of the coalition against Slobodan Milosevic resided in a carefully prepared indictment of his crimes for the International Ciminal Tribunal in the Hague." But that indictment was issued three months after the nato bombing campaign against Milosevic had begun. The worst of the anti-Americans say the Administration is rushing to judgment to satisfy a bloodthirsty American public. Wrong again. The Administration is rushing to judgment to prevent 6,000 more innocents from dying in another attack. If, as the anti-retaliationists would have it, the U.S. were to wait until it could prove a case against bin Laden in court, it is certain that al-Qaeda, or some other terror network, would strike in the meantime. We've indicted bin Laden in the past, placing our faith in international law and trusting that an immoral and murderous Taliban regime would turn him over. We got September 11 instead. And yet some on the left make still more outlandish demands: not only do they want proof before American action; they want U.S. forces to refrain from killing bin Laden and instead arrest him and bring him before an International Criminal Court (which, of course, allows them to point out that the U.S. refuses to approve such a court). "It takes a long time to bring someone to trial but it is better to take the time," says Bruce Kent of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has condemned any military intervention by the U.S. even before it has happened. How bin Laden can be apprehended without resorting to military force he doesn't say. But bin Laden's arrest isn't the point. Justice isn't the point. Proof isn't the point. Portraying the United States as reckless and cruel, condemning its actions as premature and ill-considered, stoking the resentments of America's enemies no matter how Washington chooses to retaliate — that is the true aim of the anti-American left. Sometimes it's hard to tell whose side they're really on. Actually — no, it isn't. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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