Just as it’s difficult for death penalty opponents to be too upset by the verdicts of the Nuremberg tribunal, so it is hard to be upset by the assassination (let us not be coy) of Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, it seems increasingly probable that al-Qaeda’s titular leader was executed “after” a firefight not, rather tellingly, “during” a firefight. Capturing him was never an option.
It’s easy to understand why this “clean” end was preferable to capturing bin Laden with all the awkward questions about interrogation and trials and due process and torture and everything else that would have followed. Too much trouble. For everyone. That too is part of George W Bush’s legacy. (See the depressing debate over “enhanced interrogation techniques” for instance. The case against torture is not that it can never work but that it is, almost always, wrong.)
Besides, capturing bin Laden would not have prompted the same cathartic celebrations seen across America last Sunday. Tellingly, many of the most vociferous were on college campuses and not just because students like a good street party. On the contrary, for many college-age Americans 9/11 was the first and defining political act of their lives, branded on their consciousness like nothing experienced by any American generation since, perhaps, the Kennedy assassination. The spontaneous outburst of patriotic pride was, in this way, akin to a collective exhaling of long-held breath.
The mission, daring as it was, also reveals much about the modern way of war. Had it failed as ignominiously as Jimmy Carter’s botched effort to rescue the American hostages in Iran, Obama’s re-election prospects would have been gravely damaged. Failure would have reminded America that, yes, bin Laden is still at large and, more widely, reinforced a creeping sense that the United States is a declining power, destined to be eclipsed by asian rivals.
The 11 point bump in Obama’s approval rating will last longer than the eight point boost George W Bush enjoyed after Saddam Hussein was captured. Osama bin Laden was twice the bogeyman Saddam ever was and, while it quickly became clear capturing Saddam did not change much in Iraq, the political impact of killing bin Laden is a matter of psychology. Like spycraft, politics is a game of appearance and bluff.
Put at its simplest, there have been just three obvious “victories” since 9/11. Namely, the fall of the Taliban, the fall of Saddam’s statue in Firdus Square and now the elimination of Osama bin Laden. The substance of these victories may be disputed; that bin Laden’s death has the greatest psychological impact surely cannot be. At a stroke and a bold one at that, Americans can believe they are “winning”. That matters.
Good news and victories have been hard to come by (in part because of the nature of the conflict and the enemy) and that makes this success more important, magnifying its symbolic and psychological power even if a closer examination of reality suggests it may not be all it initially seems. There is a feel good factor now and it’s been a long time since that could be said. Americans love their military; now they have a victory everyone can appreciate. What are we doing over there? Killing Osama bin Laden, that’s what.
Previous Presidents would not have thought twice about authorising such a mission. Even failure could hardly have been as disastrous as the Bay of Pigs fiasco or, for that matter, as damaging as the missed opportunity to find bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001. Nevertheless, it’s a mark of our changed attitude to the risks of war that a botched mission would have surely damaged the President just as the Iranian failure reinforced the sense of malaise that, fairly or not, helped cripple Carter’s presidency.
Success, despite what some pundits suggest, hardly guarantees Obama’s re-election. But it does choke off one Republican attack. It’s not a good week to publish a story complaining that the President is “Leading from Behind”. To the extent bin Laden’s death brings a political reward it lies in mocking that complaint and refuting the idea that Obama’s foreign policy is excited by some kind of “global apology tour“.
That charge was always nonsensical; now it looks ridiculous. Authorised by Congress though it may have been, the mission to kill bin Laden was still an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty and Pakistan is still and more than just notionally some kind of ally. It’s not the action of a President who elevates allies’ interests above those of the United States. The charges of “weakness” and “dithering” invite an easy response: ask Osama bin Laden about that.
Nevertheless, such a raid could only be countenanced if bin Laden was the target. Had Ayman al-Zawahiri been located in that compound I suspect Robert Gates’ preference for dropping a couple of bunker-busting bombs on the house would have prevailed. The risk-reward calculation – a political, not just a military sum – would have been different.
Similarly, few people are too worried by the exact way in which bin Laden was killed because, again, there’s a bin Laden exception. The rules of engagement are, figuratively and perhaps literally too, different for him. That made the operation possible. (That said it will also, naturally, encourage other countries to proceed with targeted assassinations and when the Americans complain they will be asked “What about bin Laden?” and their response “He belonged in a different category” will be greeted with a shrug and an “If you say so. But we don’t think so.”)
Pakistan, meanwhile, remains a problem and a friend. To the extent that there’s a goal on the Northwest Frontier, it lies in making Afghanistan a little more like Pakistan and Pakistan a little less like Afghanistan. Many American pundits, gorged on the moral clarity available to those thousands of miles from the action, now seem keen on treating Pakistan as an enemy state. Because three (or two and a half) wars aren’t enough.
But Pakistan, like other allies, has to be more than an American vassal if it’s to have any kind of hope. It is both aggressor and victim in this sorry, complicated business. To pretend otherwise is to introduce an unwarranted dose of simplicity to the delicate military, diplomatic and political equations that determine Pakistan’s interests (and Washington’s). Sometimes those interests align; often they overlap only partially. It may well have suited elements within the ISI to have bin Laden in a state of more or less “suspended animation”; it does not follow that Pakistan’s government is always hostile to American interests. Moreover, accepting frustration in one area may be the price of making progress in another (securing Pakistan’s nuclear technology, for instance.)
Still, bin Laden’s death must prompt a reappraisal of Afghan policy. There will be many Americans who now feel, deep down, the mission has been accomplished. The latest review of policy had seemed likely to recommend, yet again, more of the same. The kaleidoscope has now shifted. The upshot of that is a boost for Vice-President Biden’s preference for a smaller number of troops in Afghanistan, more or less exclusively charged with anti-terrorism operations. At present the ratio of allied troops to al-Qaeda targets runs at more than 1,000:1. It is hard to see this as an efficient allocation of over-stretched resources.
Symbols matter and bin Laden’s death is the biggest, most important symbol since the Twin Towers fell. It is a big deal and it matters, even if strategically it changes very little. The wars will continue because the threats posed by radical islamic terrorism will persist. But the conflicts are due a rethink. Declaring “victory” is an option, not least because many Americans must now feel the books have been, to some extent, balanced. Decentralised, dispersed terrorist networks can’t sensibly be fought by massed boots on the ground. Intelligence and the “dark arts” are more important if also and partly because they’re less visible, more problematic.
The “war on terror” can be managed but victories are few and far from clear-cut. Indeed, victory in one theatre may simply transfer risk to another. But terrorism, it should now be clear, cannot defeat “the west” and nor, increasingly, can it blackmail the muslim world or be used by repressive regimes as the excuse for their repression. If the so-called arab spring suggests anything it is that the momentum is with reform and modernity, not the backward-looking purity offered by the fundamentalists. That hardly guarantees success, far less does it justify complacency. Nevetheless, bin Laden’s near enemies are under pressure and his far enemy just scored a major triumph.
Osama bin Laden had a grip on the west’s imagination but, tellingly, his appeal and folk status was already declining where it mattered most: across the arab and muslim countries. Support for bin Laden, whose appeal was anyway rooted in the psychology of weakness, has been eclipsed by the stirrings of a different, brighter future.
That sunny alternative remains unwon but there is (or even are) grounds for tentative hope. The long war is not over and the security apparatus we have built will remain in place for at least, I guess, another decade but terrorism’s appeal, predicated on weakness as it is, has been or is being replaced by something more tangible and realistic.
There’s a long way to go and the west’s ability to influence matters remains limited. Nevertheless bin Laden’s death is a fitting moment to reconsider where we are, how we got here and where we should go next. Supporting Pakistan most probably remains part of that future since, in this instance anyway, the fear of the unknown is more powerful than the inadequacies of what is known. But elsewhere, Afghanistan’s ability to be a “safe haven” from which future atrocities may be planned seems strictly limited and, more to the point, unlikely to be thwarted by current policy either.
While bin Laden lived – and it is tempting to wonder how different recent history might be had he been apprehended in 2001 or 2002 – little of this would have been possible. He would have lurked in the background as a piece of lingering unfinished business. That’s no longer the case. Once the cheering stops, reflection can begin. Ten years is a long time to wait for this moment and I confess I wondered if some people might be too exhausted to savour it. Not so, it seems. And yet it is also true that having waited for so long there’s an element of anti-climax. Symbols are often much more than ephemera but they’re not enough. It stands to reason that if bin Laden had franchised his operation, decapitating it cannot have the impact it might have before such franchising took place.
Nonetheless, the mystery has been solved and, like so many other terrorists before him, bin Laden, who seemed so large while he lived now seems so very small in death. And yet the feeling persists, somehow, that everything and nothing is changed by his death. Perhaps that’s a fitting reflection of this complicated, often paradoxical struggle. Osama bin Laden can be killed by the Americans but bin Ladenism and all it and its assorted confreres represent, isn’t dead yet. Nor can it be extinguished by the United States alone and it may be that accepting increased uncertainty in Cairo and Damascus and Tehran and even Islamabad is the short to medium term price for the hope of a better, more peaceful, more properous long-term future. That too is a high-risk and delicate calculation.
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