Justice, bin Laden and the Arab Spring

In one way or another Osama bin Laden killed or is in someway responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and because of that widely held conviction, a few days ago President Obama ordered the arrest or killing of Osama bin Laden; and at various levels most of us think that the ordering of his arrest or death, and the subsequent execution of that order was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Well, most of us that is, who do not subscribe to Bin Laden's world view. But what about those who agree with a little of what bin Laden stood for ? Would they be so certain that the killing and disposal of bin Ladin was an act of reasonableness and an expression of justice?

I suspect not, there is a community of people in the world who are not terrorists, and who may well have had abhored what took place on 9/1,1 but who nevertheless, look at the actions of the West in its response to Islamic Terror and would struggle to see our actions as justice. They might see actions that are inevitable; in the same way that everybody knows that if you kick the shins of the biggest kid in the playground, one day, inevitably he will get you and pay you back in kind. Its not justice, but you brought it upon yourself, so you had it coming. Then there will be others who agree with the fundamental principles of Bin Laden's struggle and yet are committed to those principles as men and women of peace; perhaps they might see his death as Gods justice rather than that of men.

But the death of Osama bin Laden, should not be confused with justice; justice is defined in law and in the processes of law. Without those, there is no justice and what the Western media needs to remember, is that what they are celebrating is power and it is revenge, and whilst it seems right to you and I in the West, it will look less so to others.

Does it matter? Do we care if parts of the Muslim world think that the West wields it power, without process and justification? When people from the Muslim world look at our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and see them as an abuse of power, does it matter to us? Does it matter if we ignore the thousands of people who died as a result of our search for revenge, in the heady moments of our collective celebration of the death of Osama bin Laden.

Well it will, if the movement inspired by Mohamed Bouazzi turns out to be a false dawn; or worse, if it fails because we cared more about revenge than we did about hope.