In the case of Shakil Afridi, none dare call it treason

By Thomas Fleming

When is treason not treason?  When the traitor in question has helped the United States.

Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani physician who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years by a tribal court in northwestern Pakistan. Dr. Afridi had set up a phony vaccination scam in order to gain a DNA sample that would positively identify Osama. Afridi probably regards himself as a lucky man, since if he had been tried by a national court, the penalty for treason would almost certainly have been death.

Although he failed to get the DNA, Dr. Afridi did provide valuable assistance to the CIA. That, at least, was the story told to 60 Minutes by Leon Panetta, former CIA director and current Secretary of Defense.

Shakil Afridi
Assassinated: Osama Bin Laden was killed by American troops after Shakil Afridi's confirmed his identity

Treason: Dr Shakeel Afridi, pictured left, was jailed for 33 year in Islamabad for helping the U.S. find Osama bin Laden by setting up a vaccination programme that led him collect DNA from the Al Qaeda leader's children

From the moment Afridi was arrested, Mr. Panetta has been critical of Pakistan’s government, claiming that is more interested in arresting those who helped to eliminate Osama than in punishing those who had assisted the terrorist leader. As he said on 60 Minutes, “For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.”

Pakistani authorities take a rather different view, arguing that no government in the world could fail to punish a citizen who collaborated with a foreign state to violate his country’s laws and act as accessory to a homicide, even a highly justifiable homicide.

Mission: The Al Qaeda leader was killed at this compound in Abbottabad by US Special Forces

Mission: The Al Qaeda leader was killed at this compound in Abbottabad by U.S. Special Forces

Let us put the shoe on the other foot.  What would happen to a US citizen who, under siilar circumstances, collaborated with, say Russia, in killing a Chechyn insurgent accused of terrorism? 

Oh, an American might say, that would be different because Putin is a bad guy, while Americans are defending the world from terrorism, authoritarian government, and male dominance.  As Madeline Albright put it, “We’re Americans; we see farther.”

Unfortunately, farsighted people cannot see very clearly what is close at hand, and all our strutting and boasting about human rights and democracy, all our celebration of “truth, justice, and the American way” turn out to be hollow platitudes concocted to disguise the naked reality of an empire that rests on the ability to project force to every country on every continent around the globe.

Tense: The moment President Barack Obama watching the mission to find bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011

Issue: Pakistani authorities argue that no government could fail to punish a citizenwho collaborated with a foreign state to violate his country's laws

The United States refuses to play by any rules, including the rules we have devised for others.  We bomb civilian populations in Serbia where no war is going on, then declare it immoral to shell a city under siege.  We pass laws forbidding assassination and then make assassination a major tool of our foreign policy.  Coward that we are, we send in drones to attack our enemies, and if they mistakenly hit the troops of our supposed ally, we take months to consider whether we shall apologize or not.  (So far no apology to Pakistan.)

The American Empire is perhaps no worse than most empires and a good deal better than the empires of the Aztecs or the Assyrians.  But the Assyrians were superior in at least one respect:  They made no bones about their intentions or their ruthlessness.  Their texts exult in torture and slaughter, and the excavatations of ancient sites make it clear that these were no idle boasts. 

Here is the great Ashurbanipal, having a good day:  “Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs, swine, wolves, and eagles, to the birds of heaven and the fish in the deep…. What was left of the feast of the dogs and swine, of  their members which blocked the streets and filled the squares, I ordered them to remove from Babylon, Kutha and Sippar, and to cast them upon heaps.”

Our own leaders are never candid about either their motives or their actions. They live down to Douglas MacArthur’s summary condemnation of FDR, that he never told the truth when a lie would serve.  Leon Panetta, like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condaleeza Rice, never heard a shot fired in anger, but they sleep quietly, after ordering the death of Iraqis, Serbs, Libyans, and Pakistanis, knowing that their god and The New York Times are on their side.

On the whole, I prefer Ashurbanipal.