Well, it is easy to celebrate and say "justice is done" and if one were to complete this sentence, it would read "...to the 3000 dead on 9/11," but is it? And are these 3000 all that needed justice? I think the answer is emphatically NO for both questions.
Nothing you can do will bring the dead back to life, un-orphan the orphans, etc. Looking back at the last almost 10 years, would the 3000 innocent people who died on 9/11 wanted to see what has unfolded since then? Did all their families, friends and loved ones want justice to be done this way? Does the end justify the means? What else did we lose in the process? More than a thousand American lives, with several hundred wounded and traumatized for life. What about the other often forgotten side, the numbers of which far exceed all American lives lost both during the 9/11 and since then? Several thousand Afghans, some justified as "insurgents" others (albeit a small percentage) admitted as mistakes, have been wounded and killed.
So, no justice was not and cannot be done. The best one can probably say is a partial revenge was taken.
And it is certainly not the end of the story. Bin Laden may be dead, but his organization, his doctrine, and his ideology remains not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but around the world. Many more Osama's are born every day and we cannot simply assassinate them one by one. If anything this last decade teaches us all should be this. And that war hurts all and benefits only few. True that a lot has been achieved, but many challenge remains ahead, some of which include doing justice to the millions of voiceless Afghans, who have yet to see anything good in the last decade, preventing the rebirth and re-organization of other extremist groups and ideologies and addressing the root causes of terrorism rather than ameliorating the symptoms.
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Najim- Nicely done, and well said. It is clear that killing OBL satisfies some of the blood lust and need for revenge (something that everybody understands), but to call it "justice" is a travesty. Justice requires accountability and transparency, and the American people are just not ready or able to acknowledge our own role in OBL's devolvement from US supported anti- Soviet jihadi to international global terrorist. As you have pointed out, simply assassinating OBL addresses none of the underlying causes of his underlying power or appeal to his followers and supporters. And, it should not make any of us sleep any more soundly at night.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jim for the kind remarks. As I read more on the recent developments and changes in the storyline, more questions come up than answers...particularly on what this will mean for Pakistan-US relations and the future of US policy towards the region...
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