In Part 1 I explained why I consider the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound to have been a legitimate military action against a military target under the principle of self-defence. I suggested it should not be considered an illegal ‘assassination attempt’.
In this part, I wish to examine various reactions to the raid, including Corbyn’s, and the controversy these caused.
Tragedy and Farce
The fallout following the unearthing of Corbyn’s statements came to a peak when David Cameron alluded to it in his conference speech in October. It was a few seconds in a 1 hour speech, 100 words inside of 6500. However, he caused quite a stir and brought many people to a point of anger.
This is what the prime minister said:
And on the subject of protecting our country from terrorism, let me just say this: Thousands of words have been written about the new Labour leader.
But you only really need to know one thing: he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a “tragedy”. No. A tragedy is nearly 3,000 people murdered one morning in New York. A tragedy is the mums and dads who never came home from work that day. A tragedy is people jumping from the towers after the planes hit. My friends – we cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.
This was apparently to take Corbyn’s words out of context, to be dishonest. I have heard this directly called a lie. Some have gone as far as to make a comparison with the following picture or this link, a version of which was reported in the Mirror.
The idea being that the same could be done to Cameron. But is it the same? Obviously it isn’t literally the same as Cameron was clearly quoting somebody but is this a comparable act of bad faith?
Peter Hitchens, always keen to condemn Cameron, said the following:
Though I doubt whether Mr Blair would have had the nerve to make the deeply dishonest misrepresentation of Jeremy Corbyn’s perfectly reasonable and civilised objections to the extrajudicial killing of Osama bin Laden.
The false and cheap suggestion that Mr Corbyn does not regard the events of September 11, 2001 as a tragedy – when he specifically said that he did – was a disgrace for which Mr Cameron should quickly make amends.
I attempted a discussion with Hitchens via Twitter to explain why I don’t consider it ‘perfectly reasonable and civilised’ of Corbyn. One of the questions Hitchens asked me was ‘don’t you prefer trials to summary executions?’.
Furthermore, he alluded to a Boris Johnson article from 2001 which, apparently to him, to this article from the Huffington Post, this from Russia Today, and many on social media, sees Johnson getting away with what Corbyn does not.
Others have made comments about the rule of law as if the actions that night somehow worked against it. Popular secularist-blogger, Futile Democracy, said exactly that. To him the operation that killed Bin Laden was tragic because it abandoned the rule of law.
THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
By David Paxton
PART 2 – TRAGICOMEDY
"We who are about to be offended salute you"