"Osama bin Laden is Dead"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Osama bin Laden is Dead”

May 3, 2011

While Stratfor may be correct, that the killing of Osama bin Laden may be irrelevant for the continued need to fight al Qaeda, it represents an enormous and symbolic victory. It may not provide complete closure for the relatives of the 2936 killed on 9/11, or for the relatives of the 5885 (as of February 20, 2011) service men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan combating Islamic terrorism, but it was an important step in that direction. Continued vigils at ground zero and the Pentagon suggest the powerful feelings of the people. Vengeance, in this instance, belonged to the believers in freedom and was meted out by President Obama who elected the riskier, but more certain, method of sending Special Forces into the compound to kill the mastermind of 9/11, rather than the safer, but less certain, means of precision bombing from 35,000 feet.

The 17th of 52 children, Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia to a construction-magnate father, purportedly worth a billion dollars. At the age of twenty-two, he joined the Afghan resistance in 1979, returning ten years later, radicalized by his Taliban buddies. Two years later, in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he began writing treatises against the Saudi regime for allowing the basing of American troops. Osama bin Laden was expelled and his citizenship revoked. In 1996, with both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia pressuring his new home, Sudan, to give him up, he returned to Afghanistan and on August 23rd issued his Jihad against the United States. During that time, and under his direction, 19 U.S. soldiers were killed at Khobar military base in Saudi Arabia and training camps were being established for training terrorists.

In 1998, al Qaeda escalated the war against the United States. They bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa killing more than two hundred, including twelve Americans. In October 2000, al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole, while in port in Yemen. Seventeen American servicemen died.

After the attacks on 9/11, like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, Osama bin Laden came to personify evil. The question, though, will his death have a meaningful impact on the War against Islamic Terrorism? Despite Mr. Obama’s words, in his late night Sunday speech, that “…his death does not mark the end of our effort…We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad,” the killing of bin Laden will intensify pressure on the President to more quickly deploy troops from Afghanistan back to the U.S.

It could well be that time was passing Osama bin Laden by. With American help, Iraq built a fledgling democracy, despite years of attempted disruption by al Qaeda forces in the country. The success of Iraq’s democracy can be seen in the fact that the citizens of Iraq have not felt the same need to demonstrate as have their brethren in places like Egypt and Syria. While the Muslim Brotherhood may yet take advantage of disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa, the street demonstrations in Tripoli, Cairo, Sanaa and Damascus evoked a yearning for democracy – the enemy of al Qaeda. There is an irony, which Fouad Ajami wrote of this morning in today’s Wall Street Journal, that bin Laden’s death came simultaneously with the Arab Spring: “It is repudiation,” Mr. Ajami wrote, “of everything Osama bin Laden preached and stood for.”

The decision Mr. Obama took was not an easy one. Because of the fear of security leaks, Pakistan, an ally, was not notified in advance. There was no assuredness the mission would succeed. While the administration had reason for believing bin Laden was in the compound, there was risk that he had slipped away, as he had so many times before. Also, the crashing of one Black Hawk on landing showed the risk of the mission. How much easier it would have been to drop bombs on the compound, as Mr. Clinton did in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in 1998. A bullet to the head was a far more visible measure of success than photographs of rubble taken from 35,000 feet.

While there is little question that in time people will come to second guess the mission, at this point it appears to have been carried out flawlessly. The villain was killed. The body removed and buried at sea with proper Muslim rites, but in a location in which no shrine will be erected – a fitting end to an evil man.

In his insistence in using America’s special forces and in the secrecy that surrounded the mission, the President acted in a manner that makes proud his predecessor, and would have evoked congratulations from a panoply of Presidents who preceded him, men like Reagan, Kennedy, Eisenhower and FDR. It was morally the right thing to do.

In a few days, the events of the past forty-eight hours will pass into history. As Mr. Obama urged on Sunday night, we will (and we should) stay alert to the Hydra that is al Qaeda, but our focus will return to the pressing issues of debt and the paucity of economic growth – factors that are key to our immediate and future well-being.