We may not be safer with Osama bin Laden now on his way to hell, but at least we can bid good riddance to bad rubbish. A malignant cancer has been removed from the face of the Earth. Unfortunately, others will take his place. When it comes to foreign affairs, the world is a nasty place. Always has been; always will be.
When campaigning for president in 2004, John Kerry described our war with fanatical Islamist terrorists in terms of a police action. The cops may be an essential part in keeping the peace and apprehending criminals in civilian communities, but it took the special skills and courage of elite Navy SEALs in concert with our intelligence agencies to carry out that precision operation at bin Laden’s sanctuary compound last Sunday.
The criminal justice system has its hands full with ordinary crime. It isn’t suitable to deal with bin Laden had he been captured. Reading him his Miranda rights at the scene, holding him in secure custody for a couple of years and providing him with a crack team of ACLU lawyers for a theatrical trial in New York would have been problematic. Killing him dead and dumping his body in the Arabian Sea saved a lot of trouble.
I had mixed emotions about the scenes of celebrations and the waving of American flags in Washington, D.C., New York, and around the nation Sunday night after the announcement of bin Laden’s sudden but long overdue meeting with justice. It brought to mind similar scenes in Times Square on V-E Day and V-J Day as World War II ended in 1945. But that was different. The surrender of the nations of Germany and Japan did, indeed, mark the definitive end of that war. Bin Laden’s death most certainly does not mark the end of this one. Asymmetrical warfare waged by extra-national factions possessed by irrational religious passions and adhering to no conventional rules is far more confounding than a war between nations.
In his Sunday night speech, President Obama made a point of declaring, as he’s done in the past, that “we must also reaffirm that the United States is not — and never will be — at war with Islam,” going on to say that bin Laden was not a Muslim leader but a renegade, and that the blood of Muslims was on his and al-Qaeda’s hands.
I’m afraid that’s only partially true. We are not at war with “terror.” That’s a tactic, not a cause. When a nation is at war, it’s essential to correctly identify your enemy. Yes, bin Laden was an indiscriminate mass murderer of innocent civilians and al-Qaeda was his instrument. But, contrary to Obama’s assertion, Islam is very much part of the equation, or at least a subdivision of it is. Bin Laden was the leader of a fanatical, ruthless, fundamentalist brand of Islam that is at war with modernity and all non-believers, which includes the United States among the other 5 billion “infidels” on this planet.
It’s not clear just how many Muslims share or are sympathetic with bin Laden’s, al-Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s murderous mentality, but the number of Muslims that took to the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. is instructive.
Information obtained through interrogations of captured terrorists at Gitmo and “extraordinary rendition” venues abroad led to the couriers who ultimately led us to bin Laden’s lair. This is a vindication of certain policies and practices of the Bush administration that Obama initially criticized and then wound up emulating as president. Ironically, George W. Bush placed the weapon in Obama’s hand to deal the death blow to bin Laden. Thankfully, he managed to summon the gumption to use it.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
