US president Barack Obama announced that on his orders Osama Bin Laden was killed in a military operation near Abbottabad in Pakistan. He claimed that justice has been done for 9/11 victims. The US has been projecting Bin Laden as the mastermind of 9/11 which killed about 3,000 innocents.
Bin Laden’s killing has raised several questions in several quarters. First: was he the real mastermind of 9/11? Is it substantiated beyond reasonable doubt? Then what about all those, must be in hundreds, who might have collaborated in planning and executing this massive terrorist exercise? Why America could not yet lay its hands on them? A number of independent groups in the West, and even in the USA, have made documents questioning the authenticity of US claims about the reality of 9/11.
Another question is: was it proper for USA to flout all international laws and carry out clandestine military operation, resembling Israel’s Operation Entebbe, without the knowledge and permission of Pakistani government? Is USA not bound by norms of international laws?
The third question is: Has Bin Laden’s crime been proved in a court of law? Was it not possible for US to capture him alive and bring to justice in a US or international court? The USA rightly stands accused of being a law to itself which can act with impunity the way it thinks fit. Justice demands that Bin Laden should have been given a chance to clear his position and defend himself.
Yet another moral question is: Why were Bin Laden’s son and an unidentified woman also killed? What was their crime? More questions erupt about the US story of midnight operation. What happened to the dead bodies of Bin Laden’s companions? Have the Americans carried their dead bodies as trophies or they are with Pakistan authorities? In all 22 people are reported to have been killed or captured in the operation.
Even the worst criminal deserves a decent burial after performance of religious rites. Why his body was not handed over to his relatives and disposed off as a sack of dead meat?
Another important question is: will now USA withdraw its forces from Afghanistan where it went to track Bin Laden. Or will it remain there to exploit minerals worth billions of dollars hidden under the deserts of Afghanistan?
Will America be able to stop the waves of hatred its highhandedness and arbitrary actions produce? Now it is time for decent people in America and throughout the world to think how we can build a peaceful and just world.