The man who knew too much

Osama bin Laden

Statement of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group. [Italiano]

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OSAMA BIN LADEN

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Barack Obama, President of the United States, has announced that US military forces have killed Osama bin Laden and four others, including at least one member of his family. The world is no poorer for the loss of the architect of the atrocity of 11 September 2001 and,, by his own standards, bin Laden has nothing to complain about concerning his treatment. The matter, however, does not rest there.

The United States claims to have "a government of laws, not of men". Why, then, was bin Laden not captured and put on trial? The answer is obvious. Trained in a CIA-financed terrorism school in Afghanistan's Tora Bora Mountains in the 1980s, he could have spilled the beans on his crimes as a tool of US imperialism during the Soviet-Afghan War. His testimony would have brought into sharp focus the obscenely reactionary nature of the Afghan mujahideen which the US recruited to fight its proxy war. The world would have heard the testimony of how Uncle Sam's allies threw acid in the faces of unveiled women and executed schoolteachers for the crime of teaching young girls to read. And they would have heard how Uncle Sam deliberately went about looking for the most bloodthirsty fanatics to arm in Afghanistan, because they would be the least likely to cut a peace deal with the Soviets' Afghan allies.

Osama bin Laden was the monster to Uncle Sam's Dr Frankenstein. A creature of the US proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he turned against his masters because of the Kuwait War and especially the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia. The World Trade Centre atrocity was his biggest crime, but ethically it was of a piece with everything he had done from the moment he graduated from the Tora Bora terrorism school. There was no way the US Government was ever going to let him see the inside of a court of law. Quite simply, he knew too much.

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group

5 May 2011