Bin Laden: The U.S. Takes Its Toll

The CIA at last comes out on top. After sound failures that had discredited it among the country’s politicians (it did not sense the outbreak of the Soviet Union, it did not notice the imminence of 9-11, it was wrong about its knowledge of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, etc.) the agency has scored a great goal with the killing of bin Laden. The execution of the operation was controlled by the experimented command “Seal Team 6” of the Marines, but the patient and laborious investigation of the location of the building where the terrorist was and of the people who lived there was done by the CIA. They can now brag about it. “Nine years and seven months to look for him and 40 minutes to kill him” as a newspaper headline read. Following a loyal collaborator of bin Laden’s for years, analyzing the peculiarities of the curious residence where they slept, fortified, expensive, without telephone or Internet and with inhabitants who burned their trash inside… These have been the strands of the skein that the CIA has unraveled.

Obama also scores. In moments where his approval and disapproval ratings were the same (46-46), the elimination of bin Laden will be an injection of short-term popularity. It is a long time from now to the election (17 months) and the citizens are and will be preoccupied mainly by the economy. Obama, on the other hand, is now being congratulated even by Republican leaders. It is logical; he gave the order for the operation. If it had gone wrong he would have been skinned.

The U.S., its prestige and its reputation are in this way enhanced. The colossus shows that who if you play you pay, that whoever harasses or seriously hurts the U.S. (the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and now, late but inevitably, bin Laden, the author of the attack to the World Trade Center, the one on Kenya and the inspiration of the Atocha and the Bali outrage. He is also who declared that his duty was to “kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever they find it”) ends up paying the toll in his own skin. The country, although its administration is shown as serene and cautious in public, is exultant.

Questions are now being raised, some of them ominous. Al-Qaida is now beheaded but is not erased from the map. It seems to be working with independent cells. It is ignored how many are there or if bin Laden or any of them owned or are about to get hold of chemical or biological weapons. The possibility of al-Qaida engineering some spectacular attacks has not been discarded; the organization would want to take revenge for its worshipped leader and show how much damage is it capable of doing. The concussion, nevertheless, is sizable. Bin Laden’s death will galvanize some but will also discourage others.

Al-Qaida was not in its best moments, either. Its popularity had fallen in some sectors of the Islamic world; it is curious to notice that the northern African revolutions had surged and discoursed aside that terrorist group — by now, in an undesirable way. A political or social opening in Arab societies, if it does not bend and fall into extremism, goes against the desires of al-Qaida. It is yet to be seen where they lead.

It is paradoxical to conclude that bin Laden has fallen to the hand of those who, three decades ago, were his tactical allies. The young Arabian, full of religious fervency, had gone to Afghanistan to fight the communism that wanted to implant Soviet troops. The patriotic Afghans fought against the Russians with Arabian money and American guns. Bin Laden would later turn fiercely against both of them. To see that the Saudi Arabian monarchs allied with the United States and allowing unbelievers near the holy cities, in order to protect their kingdom in the times where Hussein invaded Kuwait, and rejecting bin Laden’s offering to recruit militiamen in the Arab world for that purpose was something that his puritan fanaticism and his pride could not take.

There are those who say, either from fundamentalism or ingenuity, that the U.S. should have captured the terrorist alive and tried him. Where and how could the United States do that? The process would have roamed, for a long time, treacherous waters full of extremists, creating enormous complications of all kinds and costing hundreds, if not thousands of millions, which would have added to the billion, yes, billion dollars that the World Trade Center attack and its consequences meant. Prosecuting him would not have been realistic at all.