Charlie Rose Science Series
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Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman
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by Thomas L. Friedman
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10/29/2001
Ruth Wedgewood, Michael Scharf, Juliette Kayyem, Anne-Marie Slaughter
A conversation about Osama bin Laden's crimes
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A panel discussion about the charges against Osama Bin Laden if captured. Panelists include: Ruth Wedgewood, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor of international law at Harvard Law School, Michael Scharf, Director of the Center for International Law and Policy at the New England School of Law, and Juliette Kayyem, executive director of the Program on Domestic Preparedness at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
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Ruth Wedgewood spelled it all out - the whole structure of what the Bushies would do. Amazing.
You see yourselves teaching justice to the whole World. We see ourselves in the World, with the US and others, trying to find justice and to preserve us from individuals, organisations or states which are hurting peace, justice and human rights in the World. We do not see something special in American justice except that it is among those who are looking more or less for the same ideal (but, as good as it can be, is certainly not the embodiment of the ideal itself), and the US have means that most countries do not have. May be you are taking the recognition of the length of the arm of the "American justice" for the recognition of a kind of moral supremacy of the "American justice". Therefore we do not have the same basic understanding of justice and the role that the US can play in international justice. We are not â??Sur la meme longueur dâ??ondeâ?? (on the same wavelength). And you underestimate that difference.
If you prosecute and judge OBL all by yourself it will be seen all over the World as your own personal justice, the US being the judge and the party. Some may see it as your legitimate revenge and others no. Anyhow, it will surely not be seen alike Nuremberg or La Hague tribunals. On the other hand it will probably satisfy the US opinion, hopefully closing an open wound. However I am not sure this wound is as simple to heal because it has to do with the image of yourself as a nation in the world. I do not think your European and North-American allies will judge you very badly if you settle OBL, because there is no sympathy for that mass murderous lunatic in the Western world. However I would see it as a missed opportunity to bring the world community into the sanctioning of terrorism, and therefore as a failure of true moral leadership from the US. The question is not if US tribunals have the capacity to judge that kind of criminal fairly and with decency in respect to human rights. The question is that this crime (9/11) has an international dimension and international consequences and that we should be all involved, by a tribunal which has an international status, in establishing the truth, judging the wrong done and sentencing. This is more important I think than to decide if OBL should condemned to death penalty or to life imprisonment. Remember that not only United-Staters died in the WTC and it was not seen at the time as an attack on the US only, something that the dissension about the war in Iraq have outshine afterward.