America United

The death of bin Laden is an incontestable victory for the United States and President Barack Obama, even if he only continued his predecessor’s strategy. This symbolic victory gives permission to move past the attacks of 9/11, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives. Nearly ten years after the tragedy, the American nation, in some ways more divided than ever, torn between the social aspirations of the presidency and a strong rebellion against the federal state, finds its unity.

It goes without saying that the United States had doubts over the past ten years — doubted the relevance of a Manichean strategy in the Middle East, when their leaders proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” in May 2003 in Iraq, doubted the strength of the American economy, sapped by finance from the inside, and its industrial bases under attack by developing countries.

Of course, this moment of unity and national pride will not last. But President Obama, who just started his re-election campaign, has recorded the event in the long history of an America that “can be all” when it decides to, that is about the “search for prosperity,” the “battle for equality for all” or the battle for “its values in the world.” In short, it’s a country that knows how to unite itself better than others.

Regarding America’s “public enemy number one,” Obama acted in continuity with his predecessor, George W. Bush. “I want justice, I want him dead or alive,” the latter said shortly after 9/11. “Justice is done,” proclaimed Obama, in terms that would not have been lost on the former Texan president.

Admittedly, whatever the absolute horror that inspired the character of bin Laden, the justice of men is preferable to that of weapons — if only to allow the executioner to confront his victims, to show the world his true face, the monster, not the martyr he claimed to be.

The death of al-Qaida’s leader, however, occurs at a singular moment in the history of the Arab world, when it isn’t the frenzied anti-Western ravings of the head terrorist that spurs people into action, but simply the desire for liberty. From this point of view also, bin Laden is dead and the values he fought against very much alive.