KILLING UNARMED OSAMA BIN LADEN ‘DOESN’T SERVE JUSTICE’ – ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS
06. May, 2011
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The Archbishop of Canterbury is at the centre of a row after he criticised the United States for shooting dead the unarmed Osama bin Laden.
By Tim Ross, Steven Swinford, James Kirkup and Caroline Gammell
Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the 80-million strong worldwide Anglican Communion, criticised the White House for repeatedly changing its account of the raid on the al-Qaeda leader’s compound in Pakistan.
Killing bin Laden when he was not carrying a weapon meant that justice could not be “seen to be done”, the Archbishop suggested.
But lawyers and senior figures from politics and the military said Dr Williams was not living in “the real world” while relatives of 9/11 victims expressed outrage at his remarks.
A senior Government source described the Archbishop’s comments as “very unwise”, adding: “One has to give some thought for all the unarmed people that bin Laden killed. This was a very silly thing to say.”
Dr Williams’s intervention represents the most outspoken statement so far by a mainstream religious leader since the US Navy Seals team stormed bin Laden’s hideout and killed the world’s most wanted man on Monday.
The row came during another day of developments in which the US was seen to change its account of the controversial special forces raid yet again.
:: US officials disclosed that just one of the five men killed in the operation was armed, contradicting the White House’s earlier picture of a continuous 40-minute shoot-out between special forces and terrorists.
:: Relations between the US and Pakistan worsened as Pakistani military chiefs demanded that America reduce its troop presence in the country to a “minimum”. After days of questions in Washington over how bin Laden could find shelter in the town of Abbottabad, army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani threatened to “review” cooperation with the US in the event of “any similar action “violating the sovereignty” of Pakistan.
:: President Barack Obama visited Ground Zero in New York, to meet relatives of those who died in the World Trade Centre attacks and lay a wreath. The President said bin Laden’s death proved that America would never fail to bring terrorists to “justice”.
“When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say,” Mr Obama said. “We were going to make sure that the perpetrators of that horrible act – that they received justice.”
However, during a press conference at Lambeth Palace, Dr Williams questioned whether “justice” had been demonstrated by the US action.
“The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done,” he said.
The White House’s “different versions of events” during the past week “have not done a great deal to help”, he said.
“I don’t know full details any more than anyone else does. But I do believe that in such circumstances when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal, in terms of the atrocities inflicted, it is important that justice is seen to be observed.”
Elsewhere, the religious reaction to bin Laden’s death has been relatively muted. The Vatican observed that Christians “do not rejoice” over any death, in a reference to the scenes of jubilation as the news of bin Laden’s fate reached Washington and New York on Monday.
The Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, added his voice to the concerns of human rights campaigners over the killing of bin Laden before he had been tried in court. “Any democrat would have preferred to see him stand trial,” he said. Amnesty International also said Dr Williams was “right” to raise concerns about how bin Laden was killed.
However, senior MPs and government figures joined military leaders in attacking Dr Williams’s comments.
A coalition minister said the Archbishop was being naive: “It’s quite easy to talk about due process and justice from the warmth and safety of a palace in London, but out in the real world, things are rather more complicated.”
Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, said that Dr Williams should have “stayed out of it”.
He said: “As a lawyer I always believe it is safer to wait to see what the evidence is, to keep ones eyes open until that moment and then make a judgement.
“It is important that even after all this time that someone who perpetrated these terrible crimes is seen not to be able to continue to hide and escape from it.”
The former head of the British Army, General Lord Dannatt, who is a practising Anglican, rejected Dr Williams’s argument.
“In the highly charged atmosphere widening the debate is unhelpful. In the specifics of bin Laden in those circumstances the actions of the troops were perfectly justifiable.”
Tobias Ellwood MP, an aide to the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, said that arresting and trying bin Laden would have been an unacceptable risk. Mr Ellwood’s brother was killed in an al-Qaeda bombing in Bali.
He said: “This was the central al-Qaeda control centre – it was a legitimate target, and knocking on the door with an arrest warrant was not an option.
“Osama bin Laden was responsible for many, many deaths around the world, and I do not believe it was worth risking another life to attempt to take him alive.”
Pauline Berkeley, whose son Graham was killed when his United Airlines flight 175 was hijacked and flown into the North Tower, was furious with the Archbishop’s comments. “I think that is absolutely awful from a man of God,” she said.
“He would feel justice had been done if it was his daughter, or his son that had been killed – or his wife.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams Conducting wedding service at Westminster Abbey
Dr Williams has a record of attracting criticism after commenting on sensitive political issues. In 2008 he provoked consternation when he claimed that it seemed “inevitable” that elements of Islamic sharia law, such as divorce proceedings, would be incorporated into British law.
A year later, he attacked the Labour government over the Iraq War, saying politicians had failed to “measure the price” of the conflict.
Source: The Telegraph
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Killing some poor unarmed anonymous schmuck and claiming he is Bin Laden (who actually died of natural causes in December 2001) serves justice even less.
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Why does the archbishop wish to involve himself in president Obama’s fairy-tale when he has his own fairy-tale to deal with.
Why not comment on things like Who was Cain’s wife? and why did Abraham have an only begotten son Isaac and seven other sons?
Why do people swear oaths when the bible says we should make no oaths at all?
Let Obama find his way out of his fable by clicking his heels or whatever other magic he cares to use.
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So, the Archbishop of Canterbury dispenses of the ‘innocent until proved guilty’ supposition which is the foundation of modern law.
Perhaps he has a hot-line to St Peter. If so, could he ask the angels to figure out how Bin Laden turned made steel-framed concrete towers blocks collapse at near free velocity.
http://www.ae911truth.org
http://rememberbuilding7.org
When the Archbishop hears back from heaven, he might be so jolly decent as to report back to the rest of us long-suffering mortals?
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tell the good archbishop that shooting a 9 year dead corpse (assuming they shot the rotting carcass of the 9 year dessicated corpse from Tora Bora that I doubt they found) is not a crime in America…maybe not a crime in any country that I can think of.
It’s not murder when you shoot a dead man.
however, it is TREASON when you mislead not only your nation but the world into thinking that you somehow found a man who had died 9 plus years earlier, sitting on the Qaeda, using his young virgin wife as a shield, wielding nothing more than an empty toilet paper roll. That’s a crime!
go back to absolving priests of boy buggery, seems that’s the only thing any church is good for these days.
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Can you people in maerica go get a dictionary, look up the words ‘Justice’ and ‘Revenge’ and learn the damn difference.
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i think they killed an innocent man
perhaps OBL had nothing to do with9/11
and the americans did not want people
to figure it out. two wars &and millions dead for the sake of 3000 ,americans loosing there jobs,social security,or retirement,all for a lie and to make a few
idy bit of people rich wow that is pure evil!!!!i wonder what steve(a soldier)
will do when he finds out he lost a leg and arm to make some a’hole rich
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We were able to capture and bring to trial the Nazi war criminals or WWII, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein.
These men had the power of the state, and armies at their command. When they were found, they were apprehended. We did not, in those instances, murder war criminals summarily. We followed the rule of law.
By demonstrating we are a notion of laws, and that our resolve for freedom and justice will not waver not matter what attacks us, we demonstrate not only our own moral superiority, but the righteousness of our cause.
By dismissing 750 years of jurisprudence that limits the powers of the state and recognizes the rights of individuals, our government shows itself to be a rogue element in our society, one that acts as though it is above our laws.
By allowing these principles of law – habeas corpus, due process, presumption of innocence – to be discarded, we willingly participate in turning back centuries of progress, returning us to the feudal mentalities of the dark ages.
The Archbishop is correct to admonish the state. If the politicians who criticize him lack the spine to stand on principle, if they cannot be bound to adhere to the law, then be gone with them!
Warmth and safety of palaces, indeed. Where, exactly, does the unnamed “coalition minister” work? In a hothouse, or a hovel? The real world is out here, your grace. And we’ve spend the better part of the past millennium trying to make the world a better place. So stop fucking it up, now.
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Jameela Reply:
May 7th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Very good!
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The Archbishop has long been one of the West’s most important moral critics, as one might expect from a genuine Christian leader.
Contrast his tough and honest views with the kind of diplomatic pap we typically get from, say, the Vatican.
Or compare his moral bravery with certain American Christian fundamentalists who sound as though their job was to serve as cheerleaders for the American military-industrial complex.
In books and stories about the past, we invariably praise the kind of character we find in the Archbishop.
But in real life, the establishment and substantial parts of the population have no use for them, because their tough views and moral authority call into question accepted clichés and create inconvenient truths.
Recall the powerful and famous scene in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in which Jesus returns to earth to meet the Grand Inquisitor, and the two have a conversation.
Jesus himself recognizes none of his teachings in the words of the Grand Inquisitor, and the Grand Inquisitor grows irritated with someone he regards as a nuisance, finally sending Jesus off to be heard from no more.
That is, sadly, the immortal truth of how power and establishment welcome honesty, decency, and truth: they don’t, ever.
America has descended to the ghastly moral level of Israel in all of its reactions to 9/11: illegal arrests, kidnapping, torture, assassinations, ignoring international laws and treaties, imposing harsh new laws completely out of the spirit of its Constitution, maintaining an international torture gulag, and making deals with monsters like General Dostum.
When you throw away everything of genuine human value in a place like America, all you are left with is a great imperial power ready to crush anyone with whom it disagrees.
http://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/obama-bin-ladens-assassination-nothing-to-celebrate-and-no-justice-at-all-considering-the-facts-this-is-just-one-more-proof-of-might-makes-right/
http://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/more-on-bin-ladens-assassination-the-nonsence-of-al-qaeda-web-sites-making-announcements-the-nonsense-of-al-qaeda-background-on-bin-laden/
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Jct: How interesting that there are so many in favor of killing unarmed people if we don’t like them enough. Shame on the killers of unarmed people, regardless of whom they are. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams showed integrity, those howling for the murder of unarmed people showed their lack.
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And What about the Thousands of Innocent Men women and children SLAUGHTERED By THE FORCES ? GOD HAVE MERCY on these GANGS of MURDERERS.
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Remember: if you throw a rock at an armored truck representing a military occupation that has murdered millions of your own people, destroyed your infrastructure, and replaced your government with their puppets, you’re a terrorist. If you carpet-bomb a village with an AC-130 then send a heavily seven-man team in on a search-and-destroy mission into the rubble to annihilate any survivors, all based on faulty intelligence that someone connected to some bad organization “might” have been there at some point, all without the approval of the host country whose sovereignty you’re stomping all over, then you’re a warrior of democracy. And how do people rationalize this contradiction from day to day? By taking the humanity out of the people they kill. But in the end, pretending the folks dying aren’t people won’t save us all from the terrible karma of preemptive warfare.
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SAM Reply:
May 7th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Thank You,The thing that scares me is “WHAT GOES AROUND,Comes Around,and the Other Perfect SAYING:
Those of you who take up the sword,shall also die by the sword.
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What a plain truth!
Very many thanks to Archbishop Rowan Williams to be brave enough to speak the truth.
The world need more like him to
unveil the truth of Zionazi Israel-US-UK war
monger activism.
May ALLAH bless Archbishop,Palestinians and all human being on earth.
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What about all the Innocent People They CALL COLLATERAL DAMAGE ?
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK AROUND
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The Archbishop is completely right.
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Killing bin Laden when he was not carrying a weapon meant that justice could not be “seen to be done”, the Archbishop suggested.
But lawyers and senior figures from politics and the military said Dr Williams was not living in “the real world” while relatives of 9/11 victims expressed outrage at his remarks.
A senior Government source described the Archbishop’s comments as “very unwise”, adding: “One has to give some thought for all the unarmed people that bin Laden killed. This was a very silly thing to say.”
———————–
One also has to give some thought to the many hundreds of thousands of ‘excess’ Iraqi deaths that resulted from the US’s invasion of that country.
Remember that this was an invasion that was predicated on the “War on Terror”, when neither Saddam nor his government was involved in the destruction of the WTC, nor did Iraq actually possess any sort of capacity for use of weapons of mass destruction. The absence of WMD was no surprise to anyone who from the beginning listened to the real experts rather than to the Bush regime’s propaganda.
If the USA feels vindicated in abrogating the right to a trial for the sake of revenge, then that country had better be prepared for millions of Iraqis and aggrieved Muslims from other countries, whose families and friends were killed as ‘collateral damage’, to feel similarly that there is no need for trials, for due process, or for other civilised norms before killing Americans in the name of righteous ‘revenge’.
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9/11 researcher Reply:
May 10th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
show me where they ‘killed’ Bin Laden, who died in December of 2001.
just one of you show me the proof. just one of you.
you can’t.
writing stuff that legitimizes this fakery is tantamount to rubber stamping it.
please, don’t do that. this was a hoax. Bin Laden has been dead for 9 years plus. Don’t legitimize a lie.
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