Osama bin Laden was guilty of crimes against humanity well before 9/11. Most of them were committed in Afghanistan with US support, both material and moral.
9/11 was just the icing on the cake. Let us imagine that Osama bin Laden had fallen into obscurity after 1989. If I were to suggest that the acts he carried out on behalf of US foreign policy made him guilty of crimes against humanity, would you have argued that this was a "repellent" conclusion because others had committed far greater crimes? If the answer to that question is no, then the fact that many of his subsequent crimes against humanity were committed against either the US or its allies cannot possibly make him less a criminal.
----- Original Message ---- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: "lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Fri, May 6, 2011 10:29:48 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Fidel: El asesinato de Bin Laden/The assassination of Bin Laden
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And the point of departure for all of this is the question of 9f11 as a "crime against humanity," and there can be no doubt that the worldwide U.S. presence, and especially its presence in the Middle East, dwarfs the violence of 911. Doug noted that were some other nation to conduct in the U.S. a raid similar to that which led to the murder of Bin Laden the response would involve missiles.
How are the peoples of the Middle East to respond to over half a century of violence and oppression most of which is directly traceable to the U.S.? Even if one were to radically minimize u.s. violence in the Middle East, it would still dwarf 911. That is why I found repellant the labeling of 9f11 as a "crime against humanity."
Carrol