Almost a decade after 9/11, Bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals. While conspiracy theorists are already hard at work, it seems reasonable to believe that Bin Laden is dead and buried at sea.
There was considerable celebration in America and the general consensus seems to be that justice has been done. While this can be debated, Bin Laden certainly had earned a violent death.
One matter of considerable concern is what impact this death will have on the world. On one hand, this event might be assessed as far less significant than it appears. After all, Al Qaeda’s significance had been steadily declining and it seemed to have been reduced to largely ineffective attacks (such as the underwear bomber). As such, Bin Laden’s death might actually have little impact since Al Qaeda was already in severe decline. In fact, it might be suspected that his declining significance led to his death-perhaps he was no longer worthy of Pakistan’s effort to protect him (assuming they had been protecting him).
On the other hand, the event can be regarded as very significant. First, it does seem important that the United States finally got him, even though it seems almost absurd that it took us a decade and vast expenditures of money to get him. As long as Bin Laden remained on the loose he showed that America could be attacked and that he could avoid our retaliation. This also helped create a myth of invulnerability about him-that God was watching out for him. His death certainly lays that myth to rest.
Second, there is the fact that his death can help bring some closure to 9/11. Of course, no matter how many people we kill, the dead will never return to life.
Third, his death should help Obama politically. While people have, oddly enough, been thanking Bush, the credit would seem to belong to Obama. America’s greatest perceived enemy was taken down at Obama’s order, which should help boost his approval ratings, at least for a while. It should also help reduce, if only slightly, the perception among some that Obama is a secret Muslim, weak, and unwilling to be tough on terror. Whether this will help Obama with the 2012 election or not remains to be seen-but it certainly will not hurt his chances.
Fourth, there is the obvious concern that Al Qaeda and others friendly to what is left of that organization will seek revenge. Of course, they have presumably been trying to kill us all along, so this impact might not be as great as it appears. Bin Laden had been rather effective at alienating many Muslims by being willing to kill other Muslims, so the number of people seeking vengeance for his death might not be as large as some might suspect.
Fifth, the fact that Bin Laden was found in Pakistan living in a mansion seems to indicate that he either enjoyed a generally positive relationship with influential people in Pakistan or that Pakistani intelligence is hopelessly inept (or perhaps just very unlucky). Of course, Pakistan is at best a dubious ally and has routinely worked with terrorist groups in the hopes of using them to counter India.
Sixth, his death will most likely serve to weaken or even destroy Al Qaeda (at least what is left of it). While it will no doubt inspire some people to seek vengeance, it will probably have a greater impact against terrorism. It is my hope that future historians will mark his death as the beginning of a major decline in terrorism. However, to hope and to receive are two very different things.
As a final point, I do wonder what sort of reception he received in the afterlife (if any).
If we can be sure of anything, it’s that he really is dead, conspiracy theories or no; the humiliation of being wrong on that count is too great for Obama to have risked, if nothing else. If we say he’s dead, he is.
I, too, am curious what sort of effects this might have; if not world peace, this at least seems to remove one of the props supporting our military actions overseas. I’m not a big fan of defense spending beyond a certain point; it’s seems to be that our biggest threats are social and economic.
I give Obama credit for seeing this through. Maybe we can now shut down the GWOT and return home to lick our economic wounds.
Terrorism must die. Not terrorists.
I hope that isn’t too simplistic.
People are people, and while killing is seen as an option in dealing with any kind of obstacle, some of those who know they are a part of that obstacle will resort to it themselves. Because holding the option of killing inhibits confidence in and respect for better ways of dealing with things. I can’t argue it, I just know it’s true.
For me, if I think I have gone wrong or angered or provoked people who have an option of force towards me that I can’t prevent them using with ANY kind of argument, I go into blind panic and fear. The danger is when we enshrine that panic and fear in a religion or philosophy or organisation which justifies the use of force in return. Then the biggest guns win and say they were right, whether they believe it personally or not. People on their own might admit they were wrong, if they know they have the freedom to do so without fear of reprisals.
Thanks for your blog and its thought =provoking material. Thanks for your commitment to it.
Sue.
And yet:
Yes, it’s true that some pre-January 2009 antiwar activists have remained morally and logically consistent in their opposition to America’s military presence in the Mideast; but, thank God, it appears now they were only a tiny, insignificant minority. Recent events have happily made clear that the antiwar movement of 2001-8 was overwhelmingly dominated by a vast silent hypocritical majority of craven political opportunists awaiting a Democratic administration to gleefully celebrate the covert execution of a man whom, until 28 months ago, they would have described as a “tragic civilian casualty.”
Who is to credit for this rebirth in American national unity? First and foremost, we must cite the leadership of President Obama. Like many Americans – and the Nobel Peace Prize committee – I naively feared he was actually serious when he initially proposed shutting down Guantanamo, trying detainees in American civilian courts, and prior consultation with the international community. Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”
But this triumphant new era in situationally-unified American bloodlust does not belong to the President alone; we must also cite Congress’s born-again waterboarders like Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and their newfound enthusiasm for what (at least until 9pm Sunday) they would have once considered illegal military murder squads. Neither can we forget the watchdogs of America’s press, who have shown unprecedented ethical flexibility in shedding their long-held Gandhi moralism and embracing their inner Rambo.
Thanks to leaders like these, American pride is temporarily back out of the closet. And I for one take great personal satisfaction in knowing that when I’m high-fiving a random fellow American and robotically chanting “USA! USA!” at the news that Bin Laden is finally shark chum, there’s a pretty good chance that the guy was, only a few years ago, denying his love for unauthorized secret CIA-planned assassinations. Welcome to the pride parade everybody!
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/05/american-pride-is-back.html
I expected no more and no less from Obama. He’s a pragmatist.
I prefer a pragmatist to an unthinking idealogue any day.