TERRORISM
The End Of An Era Of Fear
Nearly ten years ago, on September 11, 2001, the United States suffered
the
worst terror attack in our history, as terrorists
hijacked commercial airliners and
used them to attack several targets, including the World Trade Center
in New York City. Since that day, the primary suspected mastermind of
those attacks, al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden, had been at large. Despite
promises by former President George W. Bush to capture or kill this terrorist leader, Bin Laden successfully e
vaded the United States and its allies. Last night, during a well-executed
covert operation, the United States
killed Bin Laden in
a mansion he was housed in located right outside the Pakistani capital
of Islamabad. The death of the terrorist leader marks the end of a
decade-long search for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Additionally,
it should serve as a bookend to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
both of which were launched at least partly with the stated goal of
rooting out Bin Laden and his al Qaeda allies. With the proper
leadership, Bin Laden's death could mark the end of an era where the
threat of terrorism was viewed anachronistically as the all-consuming
threat used to justify unnecessary conflict and the degradation of civil
liberties.
A LONG SEARCH:
Although Bin Laden gained most of his notoriety from the 9/11 attacks,
he
actually had been sought even
before those events for his role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in
Africa, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and the first attack on the World
Trade Center. Following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush
failed to
capture him in Afghanistan -- as even his administration conceded that
they failed to capture Bin Laden at the battle of Tora Bora -- and later
started a war in Iraq that
mis-directed
U.S. resources to an unnecessary and disastrous war. Just six months after
9/11, Bush was already telling people that he "doesn't
spend that much time"
on seeking Bin Laden. The Weekly's Standard's Fred Barnes reported in
2006 that the president told him "Bin Laden doesn't fit with the
administration's strategy for combating terrorism." Yet yesterday a
number of major conservatives
gave Bush praise
anyway. Former Bush advisor Karl Rove said that "the tools that
President Bush put into place -- GITMO, rendition, enhanced
interrogation, the vast effort to collect and collate this information
-- obviously served his successor quite well." Heritage Foundation
President Edwin Feulner wrote that "Bin Laden's elimination vindicates
U.S. strategy in the region, started under President George W. Bush." On
Se
ptember 10, 2010, President Obama told a reporter at a news conference
that
"capturing or killing bin Laden and Zawahiri would be
extremely important to our national security."
HIDING IN A MANSION:
While many expected the terrorist leader to be hiding out in a cave in
Afghanistan or in the northwest provinces of Pakistan, U.S. forces and
intelligence assets actually found Bin Laden to be residing in a mansion
compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, which is located approximately
75 miles from
the capital city of Islamabad. The United States had been scoping out
the location since 2010, and on April 29, it used a special operations
team as a part of a "
kill mission" that resulted in the death of the al Qaeda leader, his brother, one of his sons, and perhaps an
unidentified woman.
President Obama announced the news of Bin Laden's killing at a press
conference on Sunday night, saying, "The death of bin Laden marks the
most significant achievement
to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda." The fact that Bin
Laden was hiding so close to the Pakistani capital and a short drive from
Pakistani military headquarters has raised eyebrows among many, with some
analysts
wondering how
the terrorist could've avoided the eyes of the Pakistani intelligence
services. White House counterterror adviser John Brennan said during a
news conference yesterday that we shouldn't forget that "Pakistan has
been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of
Pakistan than any country and it's by a wide margin and there have been
many, many brave Pakistani soldiers, security officials, as well as
citizens who have given their lives because of the terrorism scourge in
that country." Soon after the death of the terrorist leader's killing
was reported, a bomb exploded at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan,
killing a wo
man
and three kids, perhaps the first retaliation from terrorists. The news of
Bin Laden's death served to bring closure to many Americans, with a large
group of people converging outside the White House to
sing the National Anthem,
massive cheering taking place at the Mets-Phillys game, and Arab and Muslim Americans
celebrating in
Dearborn, Michigan. The reaction among many 9/11 survivors was also
recorded in the media. "If this means there is one less death in the
future, then I'm glad for that," said Harry Waizer, who suffered
third-degree burns while escaping from one of the Twin Towers. &q
uot;But
I just can't find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama Bin Laden."
TORTURED CONCLUSIONS:
Shortly after the death of Bin Laden, many right-wing commentators began
crediting torture for the intelligence that led to finding the terrorist
leader. Bush torture program architect John Yoo said that Bin Laden's death
was "yet another sign of the success of the Bush administration's war on
terror policies" and that the Al Qaeda courier who gave the intelligence
was subjected to "
enhanced interrogation methods." Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen also said that the intelligence came from the CIA's "
enhanced interrogation program."
The National Review's Dan Foster wrote that "it's clear that we
couldn't have had this outcome without Bush-era counter-terror
policies...Obama was wrong about the usefulness of...the
interrogation methods they pursued." Yet yesterday, in an interview with Newsmax, Bush Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that the courier
was not subjected to
waterboarding or
other torture methods. Additionally, the Associated Press reports that
Al Qaeda "number three" Khalid Sheik Mohammed "did not reveal"
information that led to Bin Laden's location "while being subjected to
the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former
officials said." He identified them many months later under
standard interrogation."
A BOOKEND TO THE WARS:
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan
along with a larger international coalition, seeking to uproot Al Qaeda and
capture or kill Bin Laden. With Bin Laden's death, the U.S. has now achieved
one of its major war aim, and the killing of the terrorist leader should
serve as a symbolic bookend to the conflict, smoothing the way for the U.S.
and international community to draw down their forces from both Afghanistan,
where Al Qaeda did have a major presence, and Iraq, where they
did not. In fact, the Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan has slowly dwindled to where the group has
almost no active
fighters in the country. As Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) said during a
conference call with bloggers last year, "I think about how much we
spend, a billion dollars per year per Al-Qaeda member to defeat them.
It's
not making ourselves safer." And the irony that Bin Laden was found in Pakistan, an ally with whom the United State
s cooperates with on military and intelligence operations, and not in
Afghanistan, where it has well over a hundred thousand troops, was not lost
on Afghan leadership. "Osama was not in Afghanistan: they found him in
Pakistan," said Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "The war on terror
is not in Afghan villages...but in the safe havens of terrorism
outside Afghanistan."
As Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told ThinkProgress in an interview
yesterday, "We went there to get Osama bin Laden. And we have now gotten
Osama bin laden ... So yes, I think this does
strengthen the case [for withdrawal]."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Gov.
Brian Schweitzer (D-MT), Rep.
Jarold Nadler (D-NY), Rep.
Cliff Stearns (R-FL), and
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
echoed similar sentiments. Last night, 9/11 responder Kenny Specht told
CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he hopes Bin Laden's death could finally signal
a coming peace after ten years of nonstop war: "I mean, we're in a
quagmire, for lack of a better term, in Afghanistan. I hope to God that
tonight is one large step to maybe
wrapping up operations in Afghanistan."
