The Burial of Osama — and Bush

Osama bin Laden was an unresolved issue for the U.S. since at least 1998, when the Saudi terrorist joined the FBI’s most wanted list. Under bin Laden’s leadership, the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked in August 1998. Former President Bill Clinton promised to capture Osama, but he left the presidency in 2001 without having accomplished it.

Bin Laden went into hiding in Afghanistan after that point and was harbored by the now-defunct Taliban regime, with whose help he planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks. These attacks revolutionized the foreign policy of the then recently-elected George W. Bush and changed the lives of billions forever, since it profoundly impacted the manner in which millions travel throughout the world and because it radically altered the lives of millions more in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the entire Middle East in general.

If with Bill Clinton the capture of Osama was an unresolved issue, with George W. Bush it became a personal obsession. Bush created an entire Manichaean discourse of “good” against “evil” around the specter of Osama, introducing an “axis of evil” and classifying the foreign policy of other nations according to whether they were in favor of the new national security policy initiated by his government. One only needs to remember that the initial name of the military operation launched against the Afghan regime in 2001 was “Infinite Justice” to understand to what degree the capture of bin Laden was a personal obsession of Bush Jr.

During the eight years of Bush’s presidency, bin Laden became a rhetorical device used to mobilize the electorate. With politics of fear that can be best summarized as “reelect me or, with John Kerry and the Democrats, al-Qaida will attack again,” Bush won reelection in 2004 without having kept his promise of capturing bin Laden “dead or alive.”

Nine years and eight months after the attacks in 2001, and nearly thirteen years after the attacks on the embassies in Africa, President Obama announced the capture and death of the United States’ most wanted man.

The death of Osama bin Laden represents an enormous victory for the presidency of Barack Obama. Even The New York Times spoke of a “transformed presidency.” In effect, it is an achievement of the greatest transcendence that will help Obama to more solidly pave a path toward reelection in 2012, but it especially symbolizes the burial of the politics of fear initiated by George W. Bush.

One only needs to read the prudent message that was about ten minutes long, free of any kind of grandiose swaggering tone, that Obama gave to his people and the world to reveal that bin Laden was dead. This message was not just a “we got him,” as surely George W. Bush or whatever other Republican hawk would have delivered, but, on the contrary, had a serious and measured tone. As of this time, he has not even displayed bin Laden’s corpse, as Bush did when showing images and videos of Saddam Hussein’s capture “like a rat” in December 2003 and with his later execution in 2006.

Bin Laden’s capture is symbolic because, as various security analysts and experts on terrorism have commented, al-Qaida has remained active without bin Laden’s guidance since 2001. Osama was no longer anything more than an ideological leader, and the operations of al-Qaida’s terrorist cells, which have not successfully attacked any Western city since 2005, are scattered and under the command of the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Osama’s capture will put the focus back on security for several weeks. The State Department has already warned U.S. citizens about travel risks to some Arab countries, and the security and terrorist threat level will possibly be increased in order to prevent reprisals. However, Osama’s death fulfills one of President Obama’s campaign promises — to “kill Osama bin Laden” — and strengthens his national security and foreign policy credentials. But perhaps most importantly, this subject is now off the table and he is free to concentrate the reelection campaign on his own platform — the economy and soft power in foreign affairs — and burying the politics of fear that Bush so often utilized.