ONLY IN AMERICA

The killing of Osama bin Laden may provide some measure of justice to relatives, co-workers and friends of the dead on September 11; and to the survivors themselves.

But what about justice for the relatives and the friends and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of dead from all causes in President Bush's senseless, made up war of empire and revenge and diversion against the people of Iraq as a reaction to bin Laden's terrorist attacks? The war was based on lies and propaganda and fear tactics and intimidation; a criminal war by any and all measures of the most heinous of all crimes.

Where is the justice for the millions more who were injured or tortured or driven from their homes in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the carnage we unleashed against Iraq which overnight turned out the ruling Sunni minority and replaced it with the long oppressed Shiite majority?

Where is the justice for leaders who first approved of torture in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions and then bragged about it their self serving memoirs that earned them millions?

Where is the justice for those who ordered the systematic destruction of Fallujah, which today has an abnormally high rate of birth defects from all the depleted uranium our weaponry deposited in the soil we so ruthlessly and callously desecrated?

It is a sad commentary on American justice that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice cannot safely travel outside the US without fear of arrest for war crimes. They will live out their lives in glorious wealth and splendor, earned in part from their very criminality; but they can do so only as long as they reside in the country that only looks forward rather than backward when it comes to cleansing its own dirty war crime laundry.

The Nuremberg War Crime Trials established the principle that looking forward instead of backwards when dealing with the instigators of criminal war is not an option.

Except it is...but only in America.

AND THE NEXT STEP IS.......

Steve Chapman concludes his fine and accurate May 8th Tribune column, Waterboarding in the search for bin Laden:

"In the end, they don't really care about imposing limits, and they don't really care if torture is effective or not. Torture, in the minds of its apologists, is not a means to a good result. It's a good result all by itself."

These "apologists" Chapman refers to are not some low level sociopathic military grunts who get tossed in the brig when their photos of torture get published, causing a public relations nightmare for the war party. They are sociopaths at the highest level of government with names such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Chapman knows that full well even though as a member of the Tribune Editorial Board he signed off on the re-election editorial of those same sociopaths back in 2004 because the Trib concluded that the Bush Administration had the experience and the smarts to keep us safe.

Criminal war, torture, secret rendition, endless incarceration without a prayer of getting justice were their stock in trade for the seven years they ruled after September 11, 2001. Steve Chapman and the Tribune should take the logical next step after calling out the torture apologists and demand a full and impartial investigation with possible prosecutions for these criminals. Revealing the truth is easy; just open your eyes. The hard part is obtaining justice.

BIN LADEN'S LEGACY

Death may have ended Osama bin Laden's terrorist career, but analysis of his legacy is just beginning.

And it is shaping up to be a truly astonishing legacy.

With a few hundred, or even just a few dozen operatives, and about a half million dollars, bin Laden did what the German Kaiser in WWI, Hitler and Togo in WWII, and Stalin and Khrushchev in the Cold War couldn't: starting America on the slow but inevitable decline from greatness to ruin.

Bin Laden consciously provoked an America newly governed by leaders bent on conquest in the Middle East, to over react to his pinprick attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using flying lessons, airline tickets and box cutters. He set a trap that America willingly dove into by launching utterly unnecessary wars against nations instead of the rag tag but clever criminals under his spiritual guidance.

Here we are ten years later bogged down with semi official wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya plus military action in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and God only knows what other places we aren't told about. Against bin Laden's half million we've squandered a trillion and a half so far, with trillions more yet to come.

Meanwhile, we barely invest pennies in rebuilding an America crumbling physically as well as spiritually. Heroic teachers face larger class sizes while warding off assaults against decent wages and working conditions. We ignore truly fixing the worst health care delivery system in the industrialized world. Fourteen million Americans are still looking for work that has been largely shipped overseas. On top of the unsustainable cost of endless war we give unsustainable tax cuts to the rich.

Bin Laden knew America better than we Americans, and exploited those insights brilliantly to begin our decline. Just when we might be having a real debate about obscene military spending his killing will stifle any legitimate criticism. A military that can track and kill bin Laden is above spending cuts.

Americans may be high-fiving bin Laden's demise and spiking the figurative head nearly blown off his torso, but they would better serve their interests by observing the quicksand spreading under their American feet. Quicksand provided by Osama bin Laden.

Also published in the Daily Herald, May 13, 2011