Yankees Go Home

Obama’s next speech must announce the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan. Right now.

If the tragedy at the World Trade Center was the news of the past decade, bin Laden’s death could be considered the news of the year. It would be if it wasn’t for another recent tragedy, the one in Japan, with thousands (also) dead and missing. A disaster that has just begun and will affect generations of people in the future.

Not that bin Laden lasted only for a little while. His actions lasted nearly 20 years. During the second half we have lived differently: different security regulations for international travel and the credo of “guilty until proven innocent” governing rules about liquids in baggage; dark-haired with beards and millions of followers of a religion dominating the media. Many were put out, a few lost their dignity, even their lives, and some became rich.

As time passed the terrorist panic abated; maybe today it seems excessive, more suspicious and more arguable than ever. It is clearly easier to wonder and philosophize when, for any reason, you feel that you and your family are not threatened. But if your loved ones were victims (or close to becoming victims) in New York in 2001 or in Madrid in 2004, if your kids were potential targets of armed men, then you would be relieved and possibly go outside and celebrate in the streets, like thousands of Americans did.

From another angle it is at least “American” to say that the world will be safer from now on. The death of bin Laden is not something simple, it does not have only a “symbolic” meaning as some quickly determined. It has its weight and it is equally heavy to his action and influence.

Nonetheless, terrorism lives on and in some places of the planet it rules. Just like the mentality and the politics that created it.

The duty of the United States and the West did not end at dawn in Pakistan. On the contrary, if they want to gain something from the (for many reasons) lost decade they must revise the play differently and they must use the death of the most wanted man on the planet as a symbol for another approach to the developing world.

Obama’s next speech must announce the final withdrawal of the United States forces from Afghanistan. Better circumstances than these will be hard to find. Enough is enough. Everyone should go home, re-evaluate, see what we left behind and, mostly, what lies ahead.

Anything but that would be a huge mistake that would give al-Qaida something that the West barely kept (if kept at all): the political, military, but mostly, moral pretext to expand its influence and continue its action.