The Death of Osama bin Laden

Last week's biggest news story was the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the hands of a US special operations team. The story has a number of interesting aspects to it, but I'll focus on just two or three. Before I get to that, I should mention that when I heard that after killing him, the US buried him at sea, it immediately occurred to me that the conspiracy theorists that I talked about in my last post would almost certainly make a big deal of the lack of a corpse, and it didn't take long for my guess to be proven right. Of course most of them, at least in the US, are the same right wing crazies that went for the "birther" lunacy (since of course they are prone to believe any conspiracy relating to Obama anyway), though there are also a few on the left (yes, the left has nutty people too, though they generally don't have as big a profile or as much influence) that also claim to doubt the account of bin Laden's death. If this had happened under Bush no doubt there would be even more left-wing conspiracy theorists and fewer right-wing ones, but it was inevitable that there'd be some in any case. For the record, I am sure that bin Laden is really dead and that he was indeed killed only last week in Pakistan (even al Qaeda itself has acknowledged this). I also understand the reasoning behind the burial at sea (though I wonder if they considered an unmarked grave in a secret location; perhaps there was some reason that wouldn't have been practical).

But moving on the points I wanted to focus on, the first of these is the significance of bin Laden's death. Obviously it is a political victory for President Obama, since he is now able to claim credit for eliminating the leader of the organization behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States, something George W. Bush, despite two wars (the one actually irrelevant to 9/11 absorbing most of his administration's energy) was unable to accomplish. It makes it harder for the Republicans to claim Obama is soft on terror (though many of them continue to say that is the case) or that he is incapable of making tough calls.

It also seems probable that bin Laden's death will have an effect on al Qaeda and Islamic extremism in general, as bin Laden was an important symbol and his death shows that the US is capable of hunting down the group's top leaders (though many of them may not particularly fear death anyway -- fanatics often don't). However, the impact is likely to be limited. In fact, the big deal that many Americans and others have made of bin Laden's death shows more about the human tendency to make individual people into symbols for much bigger things, good or bad. Bin Laden has been largely irrelevant for the past decade, with his deputy and probable successor Ayman al-Zawahri being more active than him, many groups using the al Qaeda name having at best very loose ties to the central organization, and even al Qaeda as a whole looking pretty irrelevant in the Middle East during the revolutions there over the past few months. It is still possible that bin Laden himself could have directed further attacks (such as the attacks on the US rail system he is said to have been plotting), so he was still dangerous. But a lot of other people probably represented a greater current threat to the US and other Western countries than he did.

Another aspect of bin Laden's death is the ethics of it. There is reason to question the propriety of launching a mission like this in another country without that country's permission (though I can understand why the US didn't trust Pakistan's military or security agency, and one Pakistani even said "If your enemy was living in my house for years and I never did anything about it, of course you'd come get him yourself" or something to that effect). But leaving that aside, there is the point that only one person at the house fired at the US team and bin Laden himself was unarmed when he was killed, and probably had little time to surrender. This indicates that the US didn't really want to capture him, but set out to kill him. Several reports suggested that he might have been reaching for a weapon, and one mentioned a fear that he could have a suicide vest (though given that he'd been living in seclusion in that house for years, it seems extremely improbable that he'd have habitually worn a suicide vest). But it seems just as likely that this was a simple hit job, which raises uncomfortable ethical questions. There's no question in my mind that Osama was a bad person -- though there are many people who are much worse, given all the sadistic murderers and torturers in the world -- or that he was at least at one time one of the world's most dangerous (as opposed to worst) people, though as I said above, he was much less dangerous by the time of his death. I'm certainly not sorry that he's dead. But I'm not going to dance in the streets over it, and I have some doubts about the morality of just shooting him dead rather than even trying to capture him. I understand that a captive Osama bin Laden would have created a lot of headaches, but I'm not convinced we should just kill someone because it's more convenient that way.

On the other hand, I suppose one could look at it another way. Once the US had strong reason to believe that Osama bin Laden was in that house, they were certain to go after him one way or another, which is understandable enough, as he still presented a danger. If Obama had not ordered a strike team sent in but had gone with his most likely other option, a Predator drone strike, everyone in the house, including women and children, would probably have been killed. So at least this way casualties were kept to a minimum, and seemingly only one innocent life was lost (I am referring to the wife of the courier who was killed when her husband shot at the Americans, though admittedly I don't know that the son of bin Laden who was also killed was in anyway dangerous). So in comparison to a Predator strike, sending a strike team, or even a hit squad, has to be seen as the humane choice. I still have problems with the image of the US team shooting several unarmed people seemingly without even giving them time to surrender, but there are worse things they could have done. Also, at least the US leadership itself openly revised their story about what happened rather than trying to cover it up, a far cry from a country like, say, Sri Lanka, which according to a number of reports killed several Tamil Tiger leaders in cold blood after they surrendered but still refuses to admit it, despite video evidence of at least one of the people who supposedly died in battle having been in government hands.

So while I have mixed feelings about the way bin Laden was killed, I'm not sorry he's dead. But even before I heard he was unarmed when he was shot, I had read about another point that, though relatively minor, speaks of poor judgement by someone in the chain of command. I refer to the choice of the name "Geronimo" as the US team's code name for bin Laden. As soon as I read that, I thought, "That's not a very well thought out choice of name", and evidently I was not the only one who thought so. You would think it would have occurred to someone that more than a few Native Americans might be offended by equating Geronimo with Osama bin Laden. While it's not really a big deal, an apology might be in order at some point down the line.