internationally recognized head of his militaristic group against who
the US declared war (under the patriot act and War powers act).
The comparisons to Yamamoto...a simple soldier, (should be Hirohito);
is ludicrous. Chomsky has it partially right... it would be Bush (NOT
Cheney) or Obama and under all international law (as is presently
shown in the Gaddafi/Lybia case) it is illegal in any jurisdictional
court to assassinate a seated leader, especially one that is unarmed
and "protected/shielded" by an unarmed woman.
On May 8, 9:44 am, Bruce Majors <majors.br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Steven Leser <sleser...@yahoo.com>
> Date: Sun, May 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM
> Subject: [NewMexico_for_Kerry] The Hand Wringing Over Osama's Death from
> Fellow Progressives is Unwarranted
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>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/08/974146/-The-Hand-Wringing-Ov...s-Death-from-Fellow-Progressives-is-Unwarranted
> #
>
> False moral equivalencies, cries of extra-judicial killing, all of this and
> more has been the reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden by a particular
> segment of the Progressive left.
>
> To understand whether any of these accusations have merit, let's completely
> outline the situation that existed and exists between the United States and
> bin Laden and his group, Al Qaeda.
>
> In August of 1996, Osama bin Laden issued the first of two declarations of
> war against the United States. He issued a written religious edict, called a
> Fatwa that was unambiguously titled "Declaration of War against the
> Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." In this Fatwa, he
> called on all Muslims to join him in this war against America and Israel.
>
> In February 1998, bin Laden issued a second Fatwa declaring war against the
> United States, it's allies, and Israel. In this second declaration of war,
> bin Laden among other things said "The ruling to kill the Americans and
> their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every
> Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it"
>
> On August 7, 1998, i.e., a few months after the second declaration of war,
> the group led by bin Laden, Al Qaeda, bombed the US Embassies in the
> capitals of Kenya and Tanzania. Through those bombings, along with the
> October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and of course the September 11, 2001
> attacks, bin Laden and Al Qaeda demonstrated the seriousness of the ideas
> and intentions expressed in those two declaration of war Fatwas.
>
> Is it possible for an international law-recognized state of war to exist
> between a nation state and a non-nation state entity, or even two or more
> non-nation state entities? The answer is, "of course", as an example, many
> civil wars fit this description.
>
> My assertion is that according to applicable international law, a state of
> war existed and continues to exist between the United States and Al Qaeda
> and its affiliates. No cease fire or peace agreement has been signed between
> the US and Al Qaeda and acts of war continue between them.
>
> International Law, as outlined in various United Nations documents and the
> Geneva Conventions has a number of things to say about terrorism, war and
> self defense.
>
> Article 51 of the United Nations Charter says "Nothing in the present
> Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective
> self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United
> Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain
> international peace and security…."
>
> Al Qaeda is not a member of the United Nations and does not recognize the
> authority of the United Nations, its charter or its resolutions. Thus, the
> idea that the Security council can "take measures necessary to maintain
> international peace and security" in this situation via any kind of
> diplomatic actions or resolutions is moot, at least as things now stand.
>
> On 12 September 2001, The UN Security Council adopted a resolution that
> condemned the September 11th terrorist attacks, expressed determination to
> combat terrorist acts by "all means", re-affirmed the inherent right of
> individual and collective self-defense, and expressed its readiness "to take
> all necessary steps" to respond to the terrorist attacks.
>
> The September 11th attacks resulted in the US and UK as well as Australia,
> Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway joining
> together in Afghanistan to wage war against Al Qaeda and their Taliban
> supporters. Most of those countries are hardly the sort that would be
> involved in unnecessary wars or unprovoked wars of aggression. We can go
> beyond those countries who participated directly and say that virtually the
> entire international community supported the United States in their efforts
> to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.
>
> Indeed, in response to the killing of bin Laden, Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary
> General of the United Nations said "Personally, I am very much relieved by
> the news that justice has been done to such a mastermind of international
> terrorism. I would like to commend the work and the determined and
> principled commitment of many people in the world who have been struggling
> to eradicate international terrorism."
>
> Linguistics Professor and political activist Noam Chomsky has compared and
> asked us to contrast the attack that killed bin Laden with a hypothetical
> attack by Iraqi commandos to kill George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. Chomsky
> suggests there is a moral equivalence between the two. Anti war activist and
> author David Swanson wrote an article that suggests that bin Laden was
> lynched.
>
> As an aside, most Democrats were against the Iraq war, identified it as
> unnecessary and unprovoked, and we were proven correct. I have written
> several articles critical of the war and proving that the Bush
> administration knew several weeks before the war that their primary
> justification regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
> was not true. Here is one such article http://www.opednews.com/articles/Iraq-War--Six-Year-Annive-by-Steven-....
> Those facts make the Iraq war an unprovoked war of aggression and those who
> ordered it are guilty of that war crime.
>
> The easiest response to Chomsky's suggestion is that currently no state of
> war exists between Iraq and the United States. Not only that, the government
> of Iraq signed Status of Forces Agreements in 2008 and 2009 that governs how
> many US troops can be in Iraq and for how long. So Chomsky is comparing a
> killing that occurred between two entities that are at war and a
> hypothetical one between two entities that are not only no longer at war,
> they have good relations.
>
> International law and most countries' criminal law statutes take those kind
> of distinctions very seriously.
>
> It would be quite an odd argument to claim that bin Laden should get the
> protection of a non-war status and those who killed him should be prosecuted
> for an extra-judicial killing after he himself declared war twice and since
> then has continuously waged war directly through the organization he led.
>
> A helpful second example that illustrates the inaccuracy of the Chomsky and
> Swanson analogies is the April 18, 1943 killing of Japanese Commander in
> Chief Isoroku Yamamoto by the US Army Air Corps. Military intelligence
> learned that Yamamoto would be conducting an inspection of Japanese
> installations in the Solomon Islands and they learned the flight path his
> aircraft would be taking, and they had US Fighter aircraft ambush and shoot
> down the plane.
>
> The ambushing of Yamamoto was not a crime and no one then or since has
> considered it so. In wartime, the commanders of combatants are legitimate
> and legal targets. It's not considered an extra-judicial killing or lynching
> to attack combatants and their commanders in wartime.
>
> A high percentage of those who self identify as Democrats and/or
> Progressives also self identify as anti-war, and I include myself in that.
> There is a difference, however, between protesting unjust wars and
> preferring non-violent solutions to conflicts whenever possible versus
> twisting facts and using false equivalencies to demonize actions because you
> want to try to assert that all acts of violence, particularly those by one
> country or entity (in this case the US), are evil.
>
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