Vive Charlie Issue 24 | Page 36

He Said It

I’ve heard this a lot:

Corbyn didn’t say killing OBL was a tragedy, he said not putting him on trial was.

Sure, but it’s the same thing. If not achieving Outcome A (a trial) = Tragedy then Outcome B-Z (not a trial) = Tragedy. There’s not a lot you can do against that. If Jeremy Corbyn said that not putting Bin Laden on trial is a tragedy then all other outcomes are, to him, a ‘tragedy’. This saves somebody like Cameron from the accusation of a ‘lie’.

Is that too lawyerly? Too sneaky? Perhaps you think in accusing him of calling the killing a ‘tragedy’people are allowing the uninformed audience to assume that Corbyn was lamenting the death of a close chum or something. This would mean we were being asked to think Corbyn felt the absence of a living Bin Laden was the tragedy rather than Western civilisation’s missed opportunity in putting the man on trial. In this regard I wonder if Cameron have been less criticised if he had said ‘the killing’ of Bin Laden rather than ‘the death’?

Regardless, if this is the case it is, at worst, a bit of sharp practice. Though I for one never thought that this is what was meant or insinuated and nor was it why Corbyn’s comments angered me. I need no strawmanning. What Corbyn said is worthy of condemnation when steelmanned. It sounded bad when Cameron and so many others said it because it is bad.

If you do object to an apparently misplaced implication in the criticism of Corbyn, if that is the basis of your defence of him, then it demands us to ask ourselves what he did in fact mean.

Tragedy Upon Tragedy Upon a Tragedy

Here’s the rub, Corbyn didn’t just call the absence of an ‘attempt to arrest him’ a tragedy. He called it a tragedy like 9-11 was. Therein is where all known defences of Corbyn fall to shit.

He said:

This was an assassination attempt and is yet another tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy. The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack in Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy.

How exactly is the result of the raid on Bin Laden a tragedy like 9-11? If they are all tragedies then what is the tragic strand that unites them? What is the underlying and consistent theme of tragedy?

This needs to be answered by anybody stating he was taken out of context. If you have no reasonable explanation for this you are best to keep quiet when tempted to say you understand what Corbyn meant and that the rest of us are being unfair to him.

Hitchens’ ill-considered stab at Cameron provides us with a nice point to work around. And, for what it’s worth, I think Cameron was being clever.

Hitchens said:

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.

Ok. But Corbyn called them both tragedies. Cameron suggested 9-11 was a tragedy because of human reasons such as:

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.

There is a choice. Did Corbyn call Bin Laden’s death a tragedy due to the sadness and horror of the act or did he call a 9-11 a tragedy due to the ‘perfectly reasonable and civilised objection’ to its lawlessness? You can have one or the other. And I suggest you want neither.

Cameron knew what he was doing. The 9-11 reference wasn’t ‘false and cheap’, it was a move of wit and sophistication from a politician making a political speech. It spoke a truth about Corbyn and it left open the chance for people, who were so keen to have a crack at Cameron they couldn’t be bothered to consider what Corbyn actually said before they leapt to his defense,