By ANDREW MARSHALL
WASHINGTON - He was Public Enemy Number One. His bearded face stared at us from newspapers, magazine covers and the television - the evil genius who threatened the United States and all civilised nations: Osama bin Laden.
It is two years since the US launched missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombs which destroyed its embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Operation Infinite Reach aimed at targets linked to bin Laden; and the US led a campaign to bring him to justice, a campaign which is still under way. But in carrying out that crusade, justice is precisely what has been put in question.
Ask Salah Idris. Idris owned the pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum that the US blew up with cruise missiles on the pretext that it was being used to produce the precursors for VX nerve gas, a horrifying weapon that might be used against Americans. No satisfactory evidence has been produced to show that it was.
The US alleged that Idris was an associate of bin Laden, and froze his bank accounts - bank accounts held in London by a US bank.
When he threatened to sue, they rapidly unfroze the accounts. But they refused to back down on their accusations.
Idris has never been indicted or tried. But when senior American Government officials speak, anonymously, of his guilt, there is no accountability; and Idris is effectively convicted in the court of public opinion without a chance to speak.
There are several other people sitting in a grim building in New York in a similar position, the indicted suspects charged with the embassy bombings.
They are held in total isolation in the notorious 10 South unit of the New York Correctional Centre under what are euphemistically called Special Administrative Measures.
Perhaps they are guilty; perhaps they are not. They have not had their day in court and there is little sign that they will do for some time. There is a solid body of US legislation authorising extreme measures against "terrorists."
A series of top-secret US Presidential Decision Directives authorise striking back at suspects wherever and however the US chooses: Infinite Reach.
The 1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act established a new court charged with hearing cases in which the Government seeks to deport aliens accused of engaging in terrorist activity based on secret evidence submitted in the form of classified information.
The secret evidence has always been used against Arab or Muslim suspects. It has frequently been overturned. There is little sign that the bin Laden cases are going anywhere.
According to the public record, none of the informants involved in the case have direct knowledge of bin Laden's involvement. But then for those involved in this operation, evidence, apparently, is of little concern.
"We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens," Richard Clarke, America's top counter-terrorism official, told the Washington Post.
Clarke led the missile attacks in 1998. From virtually nothing, he has built up a huge powerbase in Washington, aimed at this new threat of international terrorism, which supposedly poses the greatest single threat to the lives and liberty of Americans.
A congressional report this week says that the presence of bin Laden operatives in Jordan and Lebanon suggests his organisation may be planning bombings and other attacks on neighbouring Israel.
Clarke "compares the current threat of global terrorism with the situation faced by Western democracies in the period leading up to the Second World War, when appeasement carried the day," noted the Post.
The war on terrorism has become an all-consuming passion for some in Washington in the last few years, the new "clear and present danger" against which they will "pay any price, bear any burden," as American Presidents once said of Communism. But this is about more than just a threat.
It is about bureaucratic infighting in Washington, for a start. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a struggle to define a new enemy (and the money and power needed to fight it) and Clarke has come out on top.
From Oliver North's old office at the National Security Council, he masterminds US counter-terrorism operations, reliving the dream of NSC officials since the 1950s of turning the institution into the operational arm of US defence and intelligence.
Clarke, a little-known figure even within Washington, more than anyone else has also been responsible for raising the spectre of an "electronic Pearl Harbour," a devastating assault by hackers on computer systems.
"Why would anyone want to mount such an attack?" asked the New York Times, but Clarke had an easy answer. "To extort us," he told the newspaper. "To intimidate us!"
There have been plenty of "life or death" struggles like this over the years, directed by strange men in dark little Washington offices with odd agendas and little accountability.
The "war on drugs," for example, that incredibly counter-productive US policy in South America and the streets of its cities; J. Edgar Hoover's fanatical crusade against communism; or Oliver North's "neat idea" for funding the Contras in Central America. In each case, the "ends justified the means" except that in the end, they did not.
The claim to international leadership which the US makes at the beginning of the 21st century is a strong one. But it relies, crucially, on moral leadership - on persuading others that it has right as well as might on its side.
Without that, it still has Block III Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Carrier Battle Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units, but it will lose the fight.
And who is really the greater threat to freedom in America: Osama bin Laden or Richard Clarke?
The "crusade" against terrorism and the "Islamic menace" has led American officials - all too willingly -into illiberal and unacceptable measures.
America wanted, and wants justice for those murdered in the embassy bombings. But the way they have gone about pursuing justice has involved the US in some unjust actions of its own.
It is not just pious liberalism to say that, even when pursuing terrorism, two wrongs do not make a right. Ends do not justify means.
"This will be a long, ongoing struggle," said President Bill Clinton after the embassy bombings, "between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism."
No one could disagree; but America needs to remember which side of that struggle it is on.
- INDEPENDENT
Justice a victim of US terrorism crusade
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