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Life After Osama Bin Laden: Stephen Harper's New Canada

By Paul G.R. Fleming

11 May, 2011
Countercurrents.org

“When the cannons sound, the angels are silent”.
Shame on them!

It may be too early to speculate as to why the announcement of Osama bin Laden's killing occurred on the day of Canada 's national election, so I will leave that for a time when the slow accretion of more hard evidence has overcome the resistance of the mainstream press. My purpose here is to give readers a Canadian perspective, which I know other Canadians share, on the events of May 2.

As one citizen of a country whose ideal of justice is enshrined in its Constitution I am appalled at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's silence, on May 2, regarding the obvious (and now highly controversial) irregularities of the covert CIA/Navy SEALS operation, details of which have been buried at sea or otherwise immunized against disclosure. Until the United Nations weighed in on May 6, no one – least of all our Prime Minister - invoked anything like the Rules of Engagement or the Geneva Convention. Our Prime Minister's comment, on the morning of election day, was that “a measure of justice has been done”.

Saddam Hussein was accorded due process and stood trial. Hermann Hesse was accorded due process and stood trial. How should we then quantify the justice done in those cases; was it more, or less, than the Harperian “measure”?

In the course of developing his own special unit for quantifying justice, Stephen Harper must have heard the disturbing rhetoric of those Americans publicly gloating over the killing of bin Laden; whatever others might regard to be its merits, the killing has drawn lynch mob mentality out into the open, as was evident in the “celebrations” of May 2. In his silence regarding not only the absence of a trial but the glaring irregularities of U.S. action, our Prime Minister has implicitly added his, and Canada's , voice to those “celebrations”.

Reportage agrees on few details, but there is unchallenged consensus that the U.S. President, as commander in chief of U.S. forces, ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, and that capture was not an option. Trial was not an option. Ascertainable details of the raid, which occurred around 1:00 a.m. and took a number of civilian lives at no cost (not even a scratch) to US navy personnel, suggest that capture, instead of killing, could have been planned and effected.

Close to the time the event was reported, the only media suggestion of a trial came from the eye of the hurricane of irrational and disturbing “celebrations”. As America gloated over the killing of bin Laden, one 9/11victim, Teri Maude, said that because there was no trial they (the victims' friends and family) “will never know”. The victims will never have closure to their years of pain and loss ( see For 9/11 Families, Breaking News is Bittersweet , U.S.A. today, May 3, page 2A, first article, at top of page. ). Unlike politicians, victims aren't shopping for facile answers. From their point of view, justice - contrary to Obama's pronouncement and its feeble echo in Harper – has not been served.

The rule, fundamental to democracy (remember democracy?) that every accused must stand a fair trial, is not only for the accused; it is for the society, or nation, that values truth. It is for the victims' family and friends who, more than the rest, need the truth. After May 2, those victims will never watch the face of the wise and passionate judge as he or she denounces terrorism and reads a judgment into the record of world history. Instead, they will watch, and listen, as the controversy around the veracity of the “official” bin Laden story thickens. Exactly how this deplorable situation serves any “measure of justice” is beyond my comprehension.

The foreclosure of a trial is bad enough; but the U.S. government is now deliberately suppressing evidence to which the public is entitled. There is glaring uncertainty regarding numerous material facts, including the identity of the body interred at sea. The fox has been guarding the henhouse, and demands for due disclosure are being made, not only by those whom the press has marginalized as “conspiracy theorists”. The United Nations has (somewhat shakily) called on the United States to disclose whether there had been any plan to capture Osama bin Laden and if he was offered any meaningful prospect of surrender and arrest:

“Principles of engagement in such operations require the possibility of surrender, firing warning shots and if necessary wounding a suspect, rather than killing him”. “Failure to comply could amount to a "cold-blooded execution" but the overall situation must be taken into account, including whether U.S. forces were under attack, said Martin Scheinin, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism.” (See Reuters, May 6, 2011 , Geneva at this address: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-binladen-un-experts-idUSTRE74545Q20110506 )

For the “hawks” who might want special endorsement of the demand for disclosure, Lincoln Lease, a staff sergeant serving with 142 nd Fighter Wing in Portland, who did two tours of duty in Iraq with the 101 st Airborne Division, states that if a group of people, (even the so-called conspiracy theorists) “have doubts about the authenticity of bin Laden's killing, it is the government's duty to address those doubts and satisfy the needs of our people”. ( For the full text see A soldier's response to Censorship , ( http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/
05/a_soldiers_response_to_censors.html
)

Harper's implicit endorsement of the style of U.S. “foreign policy” promises to have serious fallout, internationally, for Canada . Sergeant Lease points out, in the above article, that Osama bin Laden “is going to be a martyr in the terrorist world”: “Al-Qaida and the extremists who support them all saw our gloating in Washington , D.C. , and New York , on the night of bin Laden's killing. We killed their revered leader. Expect retaliation. It will happen”.

Harper has stated that protection of Canadians is his “primary concern”; the protection of Canadians hardly seems to have been his “primary concern” when, on the eleventh hour before election, he so quickly endorsed bin Laden's killing. I leave the reader to speculate on what was his primary concern; but whatever the answer, Harper has not only put Canadian soldiers, and civilians, at exponentially increased risk; he has stood Canadian foreign policy on its head and aligned Canada with an America that has chosen to sustain, in perpetuity, the legacy of George Bush.

The world does not need more incendiary statements, least of all from the mouth of its peacekeeper. The world needs healing. If history is any indication, Western hatred will not distinguish between al-Qaida and Islam. Neither, after Harper's obiter dictum , will Eastern rage distinguish between the United States and Canada .

And for that, we have given him another four years in office.

Paul G.R. Fleming, a retired lawyer, is a Canadian painter, musician, and sometime writer, currently serving as pianist and choir director at Kintore United Church, Ontario, where he writes choral arrangements and organizes concerts, the most recent being a fund raiser for Japan. As a painter, he has exhibited at Ontario Stratford Festival's Art in the Park, at music festivals, at various galleries, and on the internet. As a musician he has worked many venues as saxophonist, pianist and arranger; his preference on saxophone is jazz, and his most direct influence is Julien “Cannonball” Adderley. His specialty in law was the representation of injured workers in compensation cases.

 

 




 


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