Screeds
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Alphabet Bastinado
June 23, 2002
Hey, I’ve got an idea…
There’s been a lot of talk about what we would do with Osama bin Laden should he fall living into our hands. This possibility was recently revived, because of some fresh videotaped evidence that government spokesmen say is consistent with other evidence.
Some of the suggestions have been most imaginative, and all have been gratifyingly sanguine. However, none have complied with Constitutional constraint. That’s no surprise. There’s no precedent for dealing with a non-state actor who’s remained beyond our borders while directing his henchmen to commit atrocities against our civilian population.
But there is a way—and it would make bin Laden wish he’d been left to the mercies of a military tribunal, to say nothing of the elaborate protections afforded the defendant at a criminal trial.
Let the alphabet agencies have at him.
You don’t like it? But consider his exposure!
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which oversees the safety of mass transit nationwide, would surely have harsh words for bin Laden for directing Mohammed Atta et al to fly their hijacked craft so close to those big buildings. New York only allows this sort of thing when we’re making movies about giant simians who climb tall buildings. Anyway, there’s no cinematic exemption certificate on file.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is most displeased with bin Laden for all the breathable dust and toxic fumes the collapse of the Twin Towers injected into New York’s air. Some of the particulates that float over Manhattan are asbestos, which gladdens the hearts of tort lawyers but otherwise pleases no one.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) would certainly be receptive to complaints about bin Laden’s treatment of his workers. Many of these people are of, ah, modest mentality, and entirely ignorant of the consequences of ramming an airliner into an office tower. Some probably expected to survive. The old labor-market principle of assumption of risk doesn’t extend to cases where the laborer has not been properly informed of the risk. Assumption of risk also fails to cover cases where the laborer is incapable of understanding the gravity of the risk—and gravity is quite an important factor in the behavior of an airliner.
Whoops! I almost forgot! Did anyone tell the hijackers that a large percentage of Americans carry cell phones, and that the passengers on the later flights on Black Tuesday might be minded to fight back? More risk inadequately disclosed!
But there are more agencies in line for their slice of the pie. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is concerned with the working conditions of al-Qaeda members. There are reports from disgruntled former employees—no, you really don’t want their names, trust me on this—that bin Laden has his men assembling bombs and filling envelopes with anthrax spores without wearing safety masks! Imagine what they’re breathing as they do this! Granted that most don’t live long enough to develop symptoms.
Hey, what federal agency concerns itself with child labor? Bin Laden’s organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan has surely availed itself of that local resource. I mean, if the kiddies can knot rugs fifteen hours a day…
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would note that of the nineteen Black Tuesday hijackers, all nineteen were young male Muslims. Statistically, this is most unlikely to have happened by pure chance. Discrimination is at work here. The EEOC will want documentation on all of al-Qaeda’s recruiting and personnel practices, including where the ads were placed. Were the publications featuring the now famous “You Can Have Your 72 Virgins Today!!!” promotions all geared to a young male Muslim audience? That’s a no-no. If there are any female al-Qaeda members out there who have evidence of this sort of masculinist patriarchal stuff creating a hostile work environment, step forward and speak your piece. Large cash awards, ladies. Rapid advancement. No burq’as.
That mewling sound you hear is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) pleading to be let in on the action. All right, they messed up at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Surely an agency is entitled to a mistake or two! And this bin Laden guy appears to have lots of prima facie cause for a BATF investigation. Maybe this time they’ll get the part about the warrants and charges right.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) will want to know about the prominence of Afghanistan and Pakistan, well-known poppy-growing states and conduits for illegal opiates, in the al-Qaeda operation. Is this more than coincidence? And all those large cash transactions! Does the billionaire bin Laden not possess a working credit card or two? Asset forfeiture has never sounded better.
Speaking of cash, there’s a Leviathan looming in the wings. Bin Laden should hope he’s safely and cozily dead before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gets its hands on him.
The IRS is permitted to regard a man as guilty until proven innocent, you know. It can seize his assets and force him to sue to get them back—and he has to sue in the IRS’s own court system, where the success rate is as close to zero as never-you-mind. DEA’s civil asset forfeiture powers are really only a mimicry of what the IRS has been empowered to do for much longer. As for the suing part, bin Laden would have to expose his entire financial structure and its history for the past three years if he wanted even the minuscule chance Tax Court offers. Do you think anyone in the command structure of the anti-terror campaign might be listening in the gallery as he presents those tidbits to the court?
At this point, even the most rabid among us are probably thinking, “Isn’t this a bit much to dump on a poor, defenseless terrorist mastermind just for killing a few thousand civilians?” But regular Americans undergo this sort of alphabet bastinado every day, my friends. Above and beyond the pinpricks a bin Laden or his henchmen might inflict.
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