5,319 days. 84,456 hours. 5,067,360 minutes. 304,041,600 seconds. Roughly $3,000,000,000,000.
Any way you slice it, on May 1, 2011, at 8:30 p.m. PDT, President Barack Obama addressed the nation and made the proclamation that nearly everyone in the United States had been waiting to hear for close to 10 years.
Osama bin Laden is dead.
I can’t imagine how anyone who has been directly affected by the terrible plots of that man felt knowing justice had finally been done. It must be some form of closure, but beyond that I cannot speculate.
While the Sept. 11 attacks were his most dramatic, bin Laden had been involved in numerous other tragedies across the globe. He and his organization, al-Qaida, had declared war on the entire world. As such, there are countless family members and friends outside of the United States who will be rejoicing that this mass murderer has been brought to justice.
What we know is what President Obama told us during his startling Sunday evening address. Sometime in August, the president received word from his intelligence advisors that bin Laden was possibly hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Over the next six to seven months, the area was carefully monitored by the intelligence community. Finally, at some point last week, President Obama ascertained that they had enough intelligence to act. On Sunday, a small group of American forces stormed the compound, and after a brief firefight, killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of
his body.
Justice has been done.
What the death of bin Laden means is nearly as significant as the arc of his malevolence. To begin with, there will be significant ramifications for al-Qaida.
The terrorist group has always been a hierarchical organization, not a loose network of individual cells. Bin Laden was not simply the figurehead of the group; he was the unquestioned leader responsible for planning, recruitment and organization. It is this hierarchical nature that made it possible for al-Qaida to carry out such complex attacks as those that took place on 9/11.
His death, however, will expose the fundamental weakness of such an organization; namely, its tenuous ability to remain functional without its central leader. We do not know how the succession processes within the group functions. It is impossible to believe, however, that they were unprepared for such an event.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the oft-claimed second in command, will most likely take over. But it should not be misconstrued: The death of bin Laden is an enormous psychological and physical blow to the fabric of al-Qaida.
This doesn’t mean that they are defeated, or that they necessarily can ever be defeated. The type of religious fundamentalism and hatred espoused by al-Qaida and its followers is extremely difficult to root out, and the death of their leader will no doubt be followed with cries of martyrdom and retribution.
There should be no mistaking it; they will exact some form of what they believe to be revenge. Whether or not this takes place on U.S. soil or abroad is impossible to predict. But, we as a people have the ability to dictate the scope of that revenge.
The only way to combat organizations such as al-Qaida is to refuse to be intimidated by them. The ultimate blow to al-Qaida has to be the refusal of the American populace to succumb to fear. Once we have shown through our ability to absorb even the greatest backlash of al-Qaida, the group, as an instrument for carrying out terror, will be rendered null.
The other more pressing concern is that bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan. President Obama made a point to acknowledge that while the mission to kill bin Laden was carried out solely by American forces, Pakistani counterterrorism was an integral part of the operation.
Pakistan is currently the most important nation in the world with regards to U.S. security. It is a nation that is teetering dangerously close to becoming a failed state, and it possesses
nuclear weapons.
The fact that bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan, not in the disputed tribal regions on the border with Afghanistan but just outside of Islamabad, should be extremely worrying. It is imperative that al-Qaida is kept away from the means of control in Pakistan.
The United States’ chief effort for the foreseeable future should be to keep amiable relations with the Pakistani government open in order to prevent al-Qaida from colluding with Pakistani officials. Nuclear weapons falling into the hands of al-Qaida must be prevented at all costs.
The death of Osama bin Laden is monumental. There will be those who will downplay its impact, and it certainly does not mean the end of al-Qaida.
Americans have to realize that the only way to truly defeat al-Qaida is to understand that we as a people can overcome and absorb any terrorist attack without needing to respond irrationally. That being said, because of how al-Qaida is organized, the loss of bin Laden is a terrific blow.
And, it’s a reaffirmation that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Tellam: Even with Osama gone, US must maintain vigilance
Daily Emerald
May 2, 2011
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