Killing Bin Laden Continues Disastrous Bush Policies President-elect Obama stated on his recent 60 Minutes appearance that he was committed to “capturing or killing Bin Laden”. I agree that Bin Laden, and his second in command Al Zawahiri, should be captured, but they should not be killed. Killing them would be a continuation of the disastrous policies of the War on Terror which so isolated us from the rest of the world. It is a dangerous policy and one which the Obama administration should carefully re-examine. Victims of Terrorism Not Just American I have been studying the terrorism issue since 1998 when the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Al Qaeda. The victims of those bombings were overwhelmingly African citizens.  Although the target was the U.S., the reaction of the U.S.

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The Long Hunt Is Over                                                                                                                                                                Radovan Karadzic, one of the most wanted war criminals in the world, was arrested Monday in Serbia, ending a 13 year manhunt. He will be transferred soon to the Hague for trial at the International Criminal Court. I hope that Ratko Mladic, the third chieftain of evil in the Bosnian wars, will also be arrested soon. All societies create agreements for people to live together. When someone breaks one of those agreements he or she is “called to account” by the community. He must satisfy the group that he will be safe for everyone to live with.

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Stop Violence without Causing More Violence                                                                                                                                                              How do we stop people who are hurting other people? Is it possible to stop them while at the same time preventing violence that may happen as a result of the stopping process itself?  Last week the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of waging genocide and rape in Darfur.  This is the first time prosecutors have ever issued charges against a sitting head of state, a very high risk strategy indeed. The international community is still ashamed of its inability to stop the genocide in Rwanda and its intervention in Bosnia came much too late.  These glaring failures led to the creation of the International Criminal Court as a permanent war crimes tribunal. The Responsibility to Protect The responsibility to protect doctrine, worked out with incredible care and thought by diplomats at the United Nations, includes circumstances under which military intervention would be necessary in the event of genocide.  In Sudan, over the past several years the government has made war on its own people, employing the murderous janjaweed milita.  Two and a half million people are now living in refugee camps. Part of what makes this conflict so complex is the fact China buys oil from the Sudanese government and would likely block any action by the UN the Security Council to arrest Bashir.

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