But I think if one is going to [accept the illegality of the bin Laden assassination] then one is obligated to acknowledge it and then grapple with what it means and what the implications are — rather than just pretending that it’s not happening.
For most of us, to the extent we’ve considered the undeniable illegality of the bin Laden assassination (let’s not split hairs) we’ve been serenely undismayed. My hand’s raised. But we should be clear about that expedient of which we approve: it was not a choice, after all, between bin Laden’s summary execution and his escaping justice, but between that and a trial we did not want. We killed him specifically to deny him–God help me–justice. To evade the difficulties inherent in proving his guilt legally before the world–to hear it told, we acted to deny him a podium. Would a more confident America have had less to fear from Osama bin Laden the rhetorician? I don’t know. But I’ll bet a less compromised America never would have acquired him in the first place.
So this is the moral compromise the president has made on our behalf, with our grateful admiration. But we should then ask how we arrived here, where a crime is just and denying a great criminal his day in court is prudent–and how we might have avoided it. To begin, why wasn’t bin Laden tried in absentia by now and–if the case against him is so far from dispute–sentenced to death in an American court of law? Or did I miss that?
The tale of how the CIA found bin Laden would appear to be a lot more complicated than the media has been suggesting. That they picked up his trail due to NSA interception of a phone call made by one of his couriers is almost certainly correct. But consider what the subsequent steps would have to be: the courier’s location and appearance would have to be determined and then he would have to be followed surreptitiously for a period of time to learn where the bin Laden safehouse might be located. As the courier was no doubt alert to any signs of a “tail” this would be exceedingly difficult to do. As few or no CIA case officers could possibly blend in in Pakistan enough to carry out a surveillance the job would have to be done by local people. And how do you get the local people? You either recruit them yourself – problematical if you want to maintain security – or you have the local intelligence service provide them. In either case you run the risk of employing a double who is keeping the Pakistani government fully informed on what you are up to. Assuming all goes well and you have your target in Abbotabad, you then want to set up an observation post. As before, American case officers would not fit in very well, so you are again required to rely on local people. Again, there is the problem of how you acquire them and how you lease the apartment and how you get all of your equipment into the place without drawing attention in a military town.
When you put it all together, I would have to believe that the Pakistan intelligence service ISI was involved, in spite of denials. CIA could not pull off an operation like this completely unilaterally, though, in this case, I think the Agency would have carefully concealed the true identity of the target from the Pakistanis, which would not be so difficult to do as it is now clear that there were a lot of operations going on in a lot of places in the days and months before the arrest of Ray Davis for killing the two Pakistanis on motorbikes in Lahore.
There has been a lot of nonsense coming out of the White House on the whole bin Laden affair, including multiple changes in the story of exactly what happened. The Administration clearly wants to squeeze every ounce of possible political gain out of the killing. I am intrigued by the latest spin that bin Laden was still very much in charge of his terror empire. As he had no real time communications and was using couriers the control must have been more philosophical than actual. Plus most terrorism experts would agree that his al-Qaeda brand has been pretty much franchised out with little or no central planning or control. When was the last time that there was a terrorist attack attributed to him or his immediate associates? It would seem to me that the White House is intent on proving contrary to fact that bin Laden was still the leading terrorist mastermind, both to justify shooting him and also to magnify the success narrative for the president.
With his order to effect the execution of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, 40 miles from Islamabad, without asking permission of the government, Barack Obama made a bold and courageous decision.
Its success, and the accolades he has received, have given him a credibility as commander in chief that he never had before.
The law professor, it turns out, is a gunslinger.
Should the president now decide on a major withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July, or side with his generals and make a token pullout, either way, the country will accept his decision.
Yet, as one looks to the Maghreb and Middle East, to the Gulf and Pakistan, events of this historic year point to an inexorable retreat of American power and the American presence. Read more…
When I repeatedly denounced George W. Bush’s doubling of the size of government during the last election, Republicans had one primary defense of their president: “Bush kept us safe.” Indeed, little else seemed to matter to most Republicans at the time, as the party rallied around their leader, his record and a GOP presidential nominee who ran on a virtually identical platform. The War on Terror trumped all else, Republicans insisted, as the party devoted itself fully to the Warrior in Chief—who also happened to be one of the most big government presidents in American history.
Last week, President Obama significantly out-Bushed Bush: We killed Osama Bin Laden. Judging by their top priority for most of the last decade, it would seem that most Republicans will now vote for Obama in 2012. Sure, Bush doubled the size of government and the debt. Big deal—we were fighting a War on Terror. Sure, it’s true that Obama is now tripling the size of government and our debt. But so what—President Obama just killed the world’s top terrorist! “Obama kept us safe” might even be enough to carry the president through the next election. Read more…
Good Wall Street Journal Republicans take Larry Kudlow’s investment advice seriously. Will they listen to him on Afghanistan?
With the killing of Osama, is the Afghan mission complete? The original post-9/11 goal was to kill bin Laden and wipe out al-Qaida. Now that we’ve killed bin Laden and dismantled so much of al-Qaida, do we really need to trudge through an even longer war in Afghanistan? …
I am no military or foreign-policy expert. But I do know the cost of supporting a corrupt regime like Hamid Karzai’s in terms of blood and treasure. The cost is steep. I speak here as a hawk, not a dove. …
Thus far, nearly 1,600 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan. To me, this is the most tragic part. Of course, I wholeheartedly support our troops. But is this blood really necessary? Are the projected future costs really necessary?
Again, I ask myself: All this to support Karzai? Isn’t this the sort of nation-building that the late William F. Buckley Jr. opposed? Are American national-security interests really tied up in Afghanistan? Is now not the time to contemplate a much more rapid troop withdrawal from Afghanistan?
A decade after 9/11, Bin Laden is finally dead, but what has the War on Terror (lately rebranded as “overseas contingency operations”) accomplished? The American Interest editor Adam Garfinkle writes:
If it turns out that Pakistan has been more part of the problem in tracking down bin Laden than part of the solution—if, in other words, this has been part of Pakistan’s double game all along—then it reflects backward on a comment I made just days after 9/11. I was very struck by President Bush’s call for “moral clarity” just after the attacks. And my reply to this at the time was that moral clarity is all very nice, but in this case it would be very hard to achieve. In President Bush’s “us versus them” world, the world in which one was either for us or against us—reminding us old enough of John Foster Dulles’ similar locution—he apparently had not reckoned with the fact that the sources of the 9/11 attack came most proximately from three countries that we counted as allies: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. It was Saudi Arabia that brewed the radical stew in its Wahhabi schools, Egypt whose repression helped produce and then push out Ayman Zawahiri and his cohorts into bin Laden’s arms, and Pakistan that had helped create the Taliban regime in its effort to keep its hand firmly on the collar of Afghan politics. Moral clarity is hard to achieve when three of your closest regional allies are in fact responsible for the problem you are trying to solve in the first place.
What do things look like now, 10 years out? We’ll see about Pakistan. As for Egypt, it is now in flux, true, but its army is still capable of brutal repression against Islamist opposition should the need for brutality arise, and it could have the same exportive effect in the future that it has had in the past. As for Saudi Arabia, if you look at Saudi textbooks a dozen years ago and look at them today, you will see that very little if anything is changed. The Saudis are still stirring the stew. So while bin Laden is dead, the contributions of these three so-called allies remain much too similar to what they were before 9/11.
One last conjecture on bin Laden’s demise and I’ll relent. Or not. Reports now say bin Laden, despite ample warning and a likely determination to fight to the death, was unarmed when Navy seals reached him. Why didn’t he have a gun? An iSteve reader raises an interesting possibility:
There could be a lot of reasons, but commenter Wandrin just pointed out one: If he were in prison.
I find it plausible. Pakistan needn’t reveal they have him on ice and the money keeps flowing. Of course they treat him well, refer to him as a “guest”, he has privileges; they’re sympathetic.
But they’re also thinking he might come in handy some day. One hell of a trump card.
This doesn’t imply US knowledge. What we found and raided could have been the world’s most exclusive prison–whether we know it or not.
Osama bin Laden’s fortress was heavily constructed–drone-proofed, it seems, when built in 2005. He avoided land-lines and stayed indoors. This is consistent with the need to evade the US and its technology. In contrast, his compound was very lightly guarded. This is consistent with a high degree of comfort–concerning the possibility of a ground raid.
Of course bin Laden discounted the chance of a US commando raid–anyone would have (in fact, that loud ringing you hear is the sound of the president’s giant brass b**ls clanging together as he does his victory lap). There was no need to post a useless armed contingent whose presence could only draw suspicion. If and when we came it would be via airborne munitions.
What is striking is how completely bin Laden appears to have discounted the possibility of being raided by Pakistani forces. What confidence he had in the fidelity, authority and discretion of his benefactors, whoever they are!
On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. In response, the United States declared war on Bin Laden. This week, after ten long years: We got ’em. Al-Qaeda’s top terrorist is dead, the nation rejoices, and the families of the victims of 9/11 are finally getting some much needed closure.
So, hopefully, is America. For the last decade, virtually our entire Middle Eastern policy revolved around 9/11. This was true for both critics and champions of American foreign policy. If war opponents dared to ask what the Iraq War had to do with Osama or Al-Qaeda, war proponents would simply reply, “Do you remember 9/11?” In the same year we invaded Iraq, country singer Darryl Worley’s 2003 hit song “Have You Forgotten” expressed this sentiment: “Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight, well, after 9/11 man I’d have to say that’s right… You say we shouldn’t worry ’bout bin Laden… Have you forgotten?” Read more…
