Safety on Two Tracks a Year After Death of Bin Laden

Is it possible to measure the security of America and of the world a year after the death of bin Laden? The small villa in Abbottabad has been pulverized. The signs of al-Qaida come in brief messages via the Internet. Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor, works with a shortage of resources and men, but his network is not dead. The lone kamikazes that infiltrated Yemen, Somalia and Syria seem more like refugees of terror than devastating groups of fire, but they can strike again. The Arab Spring, the massacres in Libya and those in Syria have obscured and displaced the effects of extremist violence against those of authoritarian regimes.

The whole counter-terrorism strategy of the United States changed after the raid of Navy SEALs in Pakistan, which continues to prod open wounds between Islamabad and Washington. In three years of Obama’s presidency, the notorious “waterboarding” and other tortures of the Bush era have been replaced with drones and raids. Guantanamo is not closed, but the Cheney and Rumsfeld’s “enemy combatants” have now become the object of negotiations for a farewell to arms of the Taliban and a return to political life in Afghanistan.

It seems that an endless amount of time has passed since the announcement that bin Laden had been “respectfully killed and buried at sea.” There’s no doubt that in recalling the success of the CIA and the Pentagon on the anniversary of his death, there is also some partisan election speculation from Obama’s camp, but the elusive prince of terror and the dreamer of Sept. 11 was truly killed by Navy SEALs, while Bush gave them a useless chase for ten years. Obama wants to remind his Republican opponents of this when they insist that his stance on national security remains weak. It’s up to Romney, however, to demonstrate that he is better than that; disturbing Cold War stereotypes with a few strong words against the Chinese will not take him far in this field.

Yesterday the number of U.S. soldiers that have died in Afghanistan rose to 1,934. In the misguided war in Iraq there were another 4,600. Putting an end to these two conflicts must become a priority. Starting the battle against terrorists outside of the country — and determined to export democracy — has cost America an enormous human and financial price. It would be an unforgivable error to continue thinking that the lives of the soldiers are worth less than those who died at “ground zero.”