Osama bin Laden dead, but for how long?

MARK WIGNALL

Thursday, May 05, 2011

IN a world divided by the crazy geography and the illogicality of religion, its fairy-tale expectations, the exclusion of non-believers and the violent extremes of some of its adherents, the death of Osama Bin Laden will either be seen as the great martyrdom of a hero or the death of a living Satan.

In the immediate aftermath of the reported death of bin Laden, US President Barack Obama — the number one blip on the earth's political radar since the rancorous 2007-2008 US presidential election campaign and his ultimate rise to the world's top post — confirmed himself as I have always seen him, US President first, everything else, including the fact of his non-whiteness, way down on the remainder of his agenda of importance.

Obama has finally "kicked ass", and in an America still enjoying its role as the number one economy and possessing the most dreaded war arsenal in the history of the earth — notwithstanding that significant elements in the US have chosen to be blind to the race of the BRIC-like countries to wade into the cycle of the rise and fall of civilisations — the fact that bin Laden has been killed under his watch is likely to confirm to many voters next year that he has what Americans call "the right stuff".

But I must confess that in a world based mostly on political intrigue and the "unseen hand", I just do not buy the full story. Fact is, in this side of the world and especially in the Caribbean where journalists are restricted more by a lack of funding than anything else, much of the information coming to us arrives at its final destination after much "piggybacking".

We in the Caribbean tend to go, seven times out of 10, with what the main Western news agencies like CNN, CBS, NBC, AP, ABC churn out. We have little choice because there is no media house in Jamaica that can routinely afford to dispatch some hotshot, bright, fearless journalist to the Middle East twice per week and three times on a Sunday. And even if that could be done, the camels are unfamiliar with our scent and the news that we would gather would be largely unimportant to a nation of people, many of whom are trying to survive on bread and its offshoots for another day.

It is not that we should instantly believe that Osama Bin Laden is in fact alive and is sitting outside the gate of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, laptop in his hand, sending caustic messages to President Obama inside the confines of that very gated White House. The Western press has a natural bias that is, whether it wants to admit it or not, conditioned by its specific religious belief.

So we accept and carry the news based on those understandings while accepting that we in this region, insignificant as we are internationally, may want to probe in areas that may seem sacrilegious to Western social and religious conditionings.

First question: Are we really expected to believe that during the Bush era when Osama bin Laden was dubbed the world's number one wanted man with the might of the US military machine on his tail, he could not be cornered?

I do not buy that position. It is my belief, based purely on speculative thinking borne out of the presence of the perennial "hidden hand", that at some stage of the US political/military hierarchy, there was a message: leave bin Laden alone.

In Bush's new campaign in Iraq in 2003, it was obvious that the chase was not necessarily to nab the man said to be the mastermind behind the terribly tragic September 2001 destruction on the World Trade Centre towers in New York. Somehow many, including me, saw it as Bush's attempt to conveniently fulfil a mandate given to him purely by his belief that his father's mission in Iraq was incomplete and that that country's military and political neutralisation was necessary, considering its position in the heart of the world's oil fields.

Second, throughout the push in Iraq and what we in this side of the world saw as Bush's half-hearted attempts in Afghanistan, it was obvious that once bin Laden was either captured or killed, the mission would fulfil, if not the directions of the UN, then certainly the will of Christian Americans at home, especially the xenophobic conservatives, the need for the US to get bin Laden.

For this reason, it is my belief that at some stage during the younger Bush's regime, capturing bin Laden was secondary as that would not just signal the end of the military campaign but would mean the exit of the US military machine from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In any event, in politics Bush must have figured out that if a pin could take him home to the second term, there would have been no need for the lowering of the huge anchor that the death of Osama bin Laden would have provided.

For those reasons, I am not one of those willing to see Obama as the president who nabbed bin Laden. To me, looking at the motions of US politics, with Obama probably wanting to exit either of the military theatres in Iran or Afghanistan, the kill order at this time was simply appropriate.

The religious fanatics on Facebook where significant parts of it are inundated with Christian religious dogma, the killing of bin Laden has been greeted with glee, religious glee. As far as I am concerned, in accepting that he was responsible for the 9/11 destruction, he should have been immediately hunted down and either captured or killed. And that ought not to have mattered whether I am Christian or Moslem.

The world, however, does not obey the rules of a straight-line graph, thanks especially to the religious zealots on either side of the Christian/Islamic divide. To many, Osama Bin Laden was the essence of a hero and a martyr. To others, especially Christian fundamentalists, he was the seed of Satan.

Even as US President Obama basks in his political glory, we should bear in mind that those who kill in the name of their god tend to live long after they have shuffled off their mortal coil. The choices available to Obama were not many. To capture bin Laden and put him through a trial and execution like Saddam Hussein would probably have given him more clout in death than in life.

To continue to ignore him would probably not have melded well with President Obama's political timetable. The "Tea Party Express", though it may have gone off the rails in its very obvious coded racist approach to Obama, must be forced to go back to the drawing board now that Obama has met the first requirement of US presidents - kicking ass.

For the sake of America and its interests, the hope should be that bin Laden remains only a dim memory in the Moslem world. What is the chance of that happening? Dim, I believe.

observemark@gmail.com

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Osama bin Laden dead, but for how long?