Cross-Border Manhunts Put the Heat on Al Qaeda
Many pundits are pointing the finger at America for breaking international law with its unilateral incursion into Pakistan to eliminate Osama Bin Laden. But as any student of history knows: countries have regularly ignored international borders when in hot pursuit of their enemies.
In 1980, President Carter authorized an unsuccessful attempt for the helicopter rescue of American embassy hostages held by Iran’s then new Islamic Republic government.
The Israelis tracked down and killed in reprisal – on foreign soil - the Black September murderers (except Carlos the Jackal) who were responsible for murdering their 1972 Munich Olympics athletes.
The Israelis also rescued passengers of an airliner hijacked to Entebbe in 1976.
Germany’s commandos rescued passengers on a Lufthansa flight diverted by Palestinian terrorists to Mogadishu in 1977.
In 1960, the Israelis went into Argentina to get Adolph Eichmann to stand trial as the facilitator of Nazi Germany’s Holocaust machinery.
Still on the topic of Argentina, which has always claimed the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands as part of its sovereign territory, the United Kingdom went there in 1982, snatching it back from Argentine occupation because its’ residents were overwhelmingly loyal to Britain.
Then there was Otto Skorzeny’s 1943 glider rescue of Mussolini from his mountain imprisonment after the Italian Fascist Council voted to replace him with Marshal Badoglio.
From East Europe, Bulgarian writer and defector Georgi Ivanov Markov was murdered in 1978 with a poison tipped umbrella on a London bus in a joint operation of the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB.
More recently, former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko was purportedly murdered in London by Russian agents with a rare radioactive isotope of Polonium-210. But of course Russia – democratic since 1991 – could not and would not have done such a thing; the Kremlin understandably denied any involvement.
In fact, in a world of stateless actors, hot pursuit across borders is becoming more common.
For all the criticism about America’s SEALs violating another country’s sovereignty, didn’t Bin Laden do just that? He invaded American airspace to murder over three thousand innocents and create unprecedented mass destruction in a single act of terrorism.
Didn’t he – Bin Laden – settle in like a parasite onto a host wherever he could find a failed or near failed state to use as al Qaeda’s base of operations?
All things considered, sometimes a country’s gotta do what a country’s gotta do. Particularly in the interests of law, justice, retribution, and deterrence – all fluffy white clouds in the high sky of international law. But much more real when enforced by no foolin’ around guys like America’s SEALs.
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