Sometimes, and it is usually a fleeting feeling, I can understand why conservatives consider most Europeans to be effeminate. I got that feeling when I read Tom Wright’s column in the Guardian which criticizes the United States for violating Pakistan’s sovereignty to kill Usama Bin-Laden. The meat of his piece is a thought experiment.
Consider the following scenario. A group of Irish republican terrorists carries out a bombing raid in London. People are killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then to the US, where they disappear into the sympathetic hinterland of a country where IRA leaders have in the past been welcomed at the White House. Britain cannot extradite them, because of the gross imbalance of the relevant treaty. So far, this seems plausible enough.
But now imagine that the British government, seeing the murderers escape justice, sends an aircraft carrier (always supposing we’ve still got any) to the Nova Scotia coast. From there, unannounced, two helicopters fly in under the radar to the Boston suburb where the terrorists are holed up. They carry out a daring raid, killing the (unarmed) leaders and making their escape. Westminster celebrates; Washington is furious.
What’s the difference between this and the recent events in Pakistan? Answer: American exceptionalism. America is subject to different rules to the rest of the world. By what right? Who says?
I could nitpick this scenario by complaining about his assertion that our SEALs didn’t come under fire, but I have a larger problem with it. Instead of a hypothetical, let me paint something much nearer to the truth.
Imagine a man has issued a religious ruling that includes the following:
We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the [Britons] and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s [U.K.] troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Imagine that shortly after issuing this religious ruling, followers of this man blew up two of the U.K.’s embassies in Africa with the following results: “In Nairobi, 212 people were killed, and an estimated 4,000 wounded; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.”
Imagine that two years later, followers of this man attacked a U.K. warship docked in Yemen, killing seventeen British soldiers and wounding 39 more.
Imagine that one year after that, followers of this man flew airplanes into: Northwood Headquarters, the London Stock Exchange, a London skyscraper, and attempted to hit the Palace of Westminster while parliament was in session. Imagine that these attacks killed 2,996 people and caused billions of dollars of damage.
Imagine that there was plenty of evidence of Pakistani involvement and complicity in these attacks. Imagine that your foreign secretary told the leader of Pakistan that they had a choice. Either they cooperate in helping hunt down the man whose followers had carried out these attacks or they would be “bombed into the Stone Age.”
Now imagine that Pakistan pretended to help the British for a full decade but it was discovered that they were almost certainly harboring this man in relative comfort in a compound not 1000 yards from their equivalent of Sandhurst.
It seems to me that the question isn’t so much whether Britain would be justified in violating Pakistan’s sovereignty but whether they would be justified in making good on their promise to return Pakistan to the Stone Age.
We have good reasons not to act so rashly, including good old-fashioned humanitarian reasons. But we would have a decent argument for obliterating Pakistan as a lesson to anyone else who would consider aiding and abetting attacks on our embassies, warships, military headquarters, financial centers, and government buildings. That doesn’t make us exceptional. If you ask me, we have been showing remarkable and exemplary restraint. We’ve shown a bit of wisdom in tamping down our legitimate feelings of betrayal.
Considering what we’ve suffered and how badly our country has gone astray in reaction to the 9/11 attacks, we don’t need to listen to lectures about how we would react if the tables were turned. If we harbored a fugitive under Wright’s scenario, we would deserve it if the U.K. took matters into their own hands. And if we didn’t like it, too bad. It’s not like we’d go to war with London over it.
There are other areas where America can be rightly criticized for double standards, hypocrisy, and acting a bit rogue and loose with international law. The killing of bin-Laden is not one of them.
