Osama bin Laden Killed: The Head of the Hydra

Bin Laden’s importance was declining. Everyone in Washington knows that while the Saudi’s death has been promoted, al-Qaida has also been promoted to death at the same time. But the hydra continues to grow new heads every time one is cut off.

There was no talk of vengeance. “Justice has been done,” said American President Barack Obama when he announced that public enemy number one had been shot. The invocation of the old American topos makes clear how senseless the recurring claims were that Washington was, for political reasons, not at all anxious to catch bin Laden. America wanted to catch him, dead or alive, because only after that could the wounds of 9/11, still festering after a decade, heal. Likewise, the need to serve justice, no matter how long it took, seized Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.

For the Americans, the successful action is an act of inward as well as outward self-assurance. America’s enemies should know that no one attacks America without being punished. The nation “under God,” a phrase that Obama didn’t leave out of his speech, has a lot of staying power and accomplishes all that it sets out to do. The Americans were beginning to doubt that fact more and more the longer the military responses to the 9/11 attacks — which were gigantic in comparison to the deadly pinprick of Abbottabad — dragged on. The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan cost America thousands of its own dead and countless billions of dollars that are desperately needed elsewhere. Additionally, the interventions have given America a worse reputation in the Islamic world in particular. The engagement in the Gulf restricted Washington’s freedom to act in relation to other states such as Iran. America involved itself in both wars much more and longer than planned. But state and “democracy” in Iraq have not gotten beyond a precarious stage, and the outcome of the stabilization mission in Afghanistan is completely unknown.

An Extremely Welcome Report

At this point the killing of the one who — in the American view — initiated one of the worldwide chains of death and violence is an extremely welcome report. Many Americans will now be strongly tempted to see the mission as finally fulfilled and to concentrate on domestic problems. Everyone in Washington knows that while the Saudi’s death has been promoted, Al-Qaida has also been promoted to death at the same time. The Saudi was, for some time, not the underground commander who operated terror cells throughout the whole world from a command center. The Americans’ pursuit left him no room to do it. Since his attack on America he served mainly as a driving force behind Islamic extremism everywhere. Bin Laden gave young West-hating Muslims the ideology and the example of how the “nonbelievers” are the hardest to meet on the road to “theocracy.” Since then, Islamic terrorism has also grown and spread into the fabric of Western societies without direct guidance from anyone.

Bin Laden’s connection to the Arabic masses has weakened considerably. The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have run in direct opposition to the goals of al-Qaida. The terrorist network has lost support in many Muslim countries due to the large number of Muslim victims of al-Qaida attacks, but the hydra continues to grow new heads every time one is cut off. New terrorists continue to be produced — especially in Pakistan and Yemen. They are encouraged to get fired up to avenge the deaths of the “martyrs.”

Incentive for the Epigoni

Security services throughout the world are doing well to stay as alert as before. The effort that must be, and is being, secretly expended in order to contain Islamic terrorism is still enormous. Since Gavrilo Princip, no assassin has had a greater influence on the actions of major powers [than bin Laden has] or carried the fate of millions of people as bin Laden has. His singular “triumph” will be an incentive for the Epigoni even if, under Obama, America does everything it can (including a proper Muslim burial for bin Laden) to make peace with a world against which, by its own admission, it never wanted to make war against.

But one side’s goodwill alone is not enough. Bin Laden’s end comes at a time when many people are anticipating a new beginning: the beginning of the democratization of the Muslim Middle East. Western democracies are convinced that democratic political systems are not as prone to war and extremism. On the other hand, before his people overthrew him, Egypt’s President Mubarak claimed that the extremists could only be held down with an iron hand. Of course, that doesn’t describe all the possible roads to development, as a look at the Gaza Strip shows. The local Hamas government resulted from an election; nevertheless, that didn’t discourage them from condemning the killing of bin Laden or from praying for the salvation of a mass murderer who has the deaths of thousands of innocents, including Muslims, on his conscience.