A different scenario

Imagine a scenario in which George Bush — it doesn’t matter whether senior or junior — is fast asleep at his ranch, his wife by his side, his daughter visiting and next door, his house protected by ace soldiers/security types/commandos, it doesn’t matter which. Imagine the deepest moment of the night. Slowly, quietly, a group of rogue helicopters descends on the roof, with specially developed weapons, the commandos take out every soldier on the roof, and within minutes, they’re in the bedroom. Bush, now no longer the president, but still one of the most powerful and one of the most dangerous men in the world, awakes, his sleep disturbed, he sees foreign soldiers — some of them even have long beards — rushing into his bedroom. Like all men, he grabs his woman and hides behind her. But it’s curtains for him, before he can say ‘Oh Christ’ he’s been shot dead in the head, along with the wife he chose to protect him. Unknown to him, all of this is being filmed on a hidden camera; back at the headquarters, a group of sleep deprived head honchos are watching the action on a large screen. As he collapses, applause breaks out, the relief is palpable. “We did it. We’ve taken him out; the most dangerous man in the world is dead.” Wearily, the leader rises, “Thank you guys,” he says — although there is a gal there, but who notices her? “We’ve changed the history of the world. You deserve a well-earned rest. I’ll make an announcement in the morning.”

There’s no rest for him though, for there are still things to be decided. How much to tell, who to tell, where to bury the man, whether to bury him at all or to ‘disappear’ the body. Does the world need proof that he’s gone, or will they take his word for it — this one’s easy, they’ll damned well have to — and so he heads off to continue his onerous tasks. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. No matter that he once belonged to a minority, an oppressed group, now the power is his, and he has to deal with it.

Let’s take the imagination a bit further: Let’s speculate. The man who’s been killed, we now know, is ex-president Bush. The killers, from some unspecified nation, let’s say they are from Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Libya or… and in their wisdom, they’ve long ago decided not to inform the Americans of their plot, for fear that it might leak out, they might actually warn the man and stymie the action. What would the likely after-the-action scenario be?

Very likely we’d be looking at not only World War 3, but 4 and 5 and 6 rolled into one. Very likely the ‘offending nation’ would disappear off the face of the earth. No matter how many arguments they might make that they were seeking justice for the hundreds of thousands killed in US-engineered battles in their countries, or in the ongoing war — seen by its perpetrators as a ‘just’ war — on terror, none of this would hold. The price of an American life is, after all, much much more than that of scum from Third World countries, especially those who defend particular religions. So, off with their heads — men, women, children, old people, dogs and cats, all. Justice, after all, has to be done.

But aren’t there international structures of justice you might ask, places where nations can go to try war criminals? Wouldn’t it have been better for the justice-seeking nation to go there and put the man they killed on trial? After all, isn’t that what most countries ask their citizens to do internally — to report crimes, to follow the legal procedure, to put people on trial, to look at evidence, to let them be judged on the basis of that?

That may be so, but the catch here is — to be judged by international law, you have to have signed up for it, you have to agree that you will be judged by the same rules as others, no matter what their size. And how can the most powerful nation in the world allow itself to be so judged — it is after all, God.

And you might add, this is what comes of living in a borderless world — we’re all global citizens, we’ve all been demanding globalisation, half the time we live in a virtual world, so what do borders mean anyway? Why should we respect them? If the Japanese can sell their cars to us, and the Israelis can run our security services, and the Chinese can sell us everything, why can’t we (the ‘we’ can be from either side) send our soldiers across to do justice as we see fit? Who’s to stop us? And if we feel we can’t really trust the others, and tell them what we are planning, well, who can blame us?

It’s a strange world we live in. Never before has the balance of power been so clear, so sharply defined. A fanatical, dangerous man being killed — that can only be good — by a fanatical dangerous power, in an outright violation of all legal and ethical norms, is a deep insult to the country that housed the man. And there’s a deafening silence all around. None of the allies who have backed America in attacking Iraq or Libya have dared to raise a squeak about the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. How can they? Pakistan itself is compromised: Deeply indebted to America, how can it speak out against it? Found to have housed bin Laden in the heart of a militarised city, how can it pretend not to have known? And if it, indeed, did not know, how to explain away the security lapse?

And will the world be a better place for this death? At least that’s one thing everyone is agreed upon: It won’t. The threats will not go away, the dangers will probably escalate because now there is another act to be avenged. But why should that bother the leaders — they’re not the ones who suffer — it’s the people who will have to bear the brunt. And Mr Obama — one-time hero of millions, the first black president of the United States — will win another election.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2011.