BBC's Question Time ought to come with a health warning. Not a week goes by without the programme raising my blood pressure, often due to my irritation with intolerant right-wing panelists. This week's death of Osama Bin Laden led to an unusual changing of sides, whereby I found myself allied to the panel's neoconservative.
There were mitigating factors. The liberal element of the panel were represented by the unusually erratic former Liberal Democrat leader, Lord Ashdown, and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Alibhai-Brown is highly intelligent, but her delivery makes it difficult to warm to her. It was not helped that both took the position of arguing that as with all criminals, Bin Laden had human rights and should not have been killed.
As they discussed his rights to having a fair trial, I suddenly found myself trapped alone, with an equally difficult to warm to neoconservative, in the real world.
In this real world, my limited knowledge of the rule of law and terms of engagement were over-ruled by a sense of relief that Bin Laden no longer walked the earth.
In this real world, I felt that Bin Laden's right to a fair trial was pointless convention. What was he going to do? Plead not guilty to the atrocities he has frequently boasted about on tape?
In this real world, I realised that dead or alive, Bin Laden was a huge trophy that would have sent blackmailers into overdrive?
In this real world, the comparisons between Nazi war criminals and Bin Laden were false comparisons because the nature of the conflict is different. When the Nazis surrendered, the game was up for them. Al-Qaeda is something more fluid and evolving. Nazis on trial did not inflame their dead ideology. Bin Laden on trial would have been a massive wind-up.
The fact of the matter is those leftist intellects mean well, but often find themselves in the position of defending the indefensible. As someone also coming from the left, my kindness does not stretch infinitely and sometimes I wish I could shake some of the others.
I admire the ideals coming from many writers of columns often seen in The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer, but often their thoughts are simply not palatable to the public. If they were, then perhaps they would sell more than a few hundred thousand daily papers. Trying to sell the idea Bin Laden was a man with rights is a difficult one.
The last word should be with Barack Obama, who I believe when he said Bin Laden's death makes the world a safer place. It will be safer, but not entirely safe of course. There will continue to be risk, but I find it hard to believe that Bin Laden being alive today would be of help to anyone. I am not even convinced it is what Bin Laden himself would have wanted.
