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York.
Roy Jenkins is in town, promoting his superb biography of Winston
Churchill. The diners were reminded of his eminent career and
accomplishments, including a term as Home Secretary, during which
the initiative was taken to abolish capital punishment. At the question
period, Barbara Walters asked whether his views on that subject
were as adamant as ever, in the age of Osama bin Laden. He replied
that what he had most objected to, in 1965, was the "stately
procession" of the condemned as, so to speak, they inched their
way, seat by seat, cell by cell, toward the gallows.
It will not be that way with Osama, but it warrants reflection to
ask: How will it be? There's nothing of the innocent-until-proved-guilty
business in the air. The only people who question his complicity
in terrorism are Islamic sympathizers who cling to a jurisprudential
straw, reminding us of the eleven months required at Nuremberg to
prove that Hermann Goering had a hand in promoting aggressive war
and killing and torturing an ethnic division of mankind.
But that does
not answer the mechanical question, What do we do, after the noose
Secretary Rumsfeld refers to, has tightened to the point of isolating
Osama in a cave near Kandahar, which cave at the moment of inquiry
is encircled by 28,000 soldiers, 238 machine guns, 20 artillery
pieces, the opening floodlit, half the world's press, cameras poised,
radioing to each other and to the world, with special intensity
to those New Yorkers who live in the area of Ground Zero, everyone's
eyes trained on the opening from which Osama will have to debouch,
in a non-stately approach to the end.
We know that the Defense Department and indeed the State Department
do contingency planning. What does the U.S. do if Nation X a) drops
a nuclear bomb on Detroit, b) threatens to do so, c) is caught sending
missile weapons to Iraq, d) calls for a summit conference to discuss
the question of nuclear development? Answer: We a) drop a nuclear
bomb on them, b), threaten to do so, c) institute a blockade, d)
call for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Etc.
So how will it be with Osama?
a) He kills himself, and his body, on a gurney, is slid out on a
tarpaulin sled.
b) He sends out word that he will emerge on the condition that he
is tried by a tribunal the composition of which must be approved
by the U.N. Security Council, to which body, he insists, his message
should be instantly relayed. He will await the reply of the Secretary
General.
c) Over the radio, he agrees to surrender provided his imprisoned
associates Mohameds Aziz, Busdam, Ceelah, and Daes are given safe
passage to Yemen. The reply to that proposal comes in from General
Franks by loudspeaker. It is a horse laugh (rendered in Arabic by
an aide).
d) Osama announces
on the radio that at exactly 2001, he will emerge from the cave,
a white flag in his hand, and submit to the conquering forces of
evil. President Bush, watching the scene in the Situation Room,
earphones over his head, says to General Franks: "We've discussed
that contingency. Is the sniper ready?"
e) An entire day goes by. And then nears the completion of a second
day. The encircling troops and press preen with apprehension. There
is a contingency plan ("My vote," General Franks is heard
to whisper to an aide, "was to go with this one at 0100 hours,
not day after tomorrow."): If Osama is not out at 2400 hours,
a Stinger missile will be fired into the cavity of the mountain,
followed by a rain of smoke bombs. Whoever is in there along with
Osama will be dead or asphyxiated.
And of course
there are the bloody alternatives, most likely that somehow he will
have got away before we situate him in that cave. And already we
wonder: Who would take him in? It isn't that, like one of the German
Nazis, he could easily pass himself off as an itinerant rug dealer,
and go off to live in Argentina. For one thing, that would collapse
his entire afflatus, and this is the one risk he would surely not
take. For another, the kind of screening that will go into effect
if Osama has escaped Afghanistan will make any country that enfolds
him edgier than even North Korea would wish to be.
The Pentagon probably has a contingency plan for that scenario,
but it is secret, and not even Barbara Walters can find out what
it is.
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