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| [credit: BBC] |
Ten years and thousands of lives later, the United States finally accomplished a goal of the Afghanistan invasion: the elimination or capture of Osama Bin Laden. The leader of Al Qaeda and former CIA collaborator
[1] was killed while unarmed during a US raid near Abbottabad, Pakistan where he was known to be hiding early Monday. Bin Laden's location was traced through a trusted courier identified by captives (
not subjected to torture, but standard interrogation methods) and pinpointed last summer. It is clear from reports the raid by Navy SEALs was executed
without the knowledge or cooperation of the Pakastani government. Relations between the two countries have been strained recently. Secretary of State Clinton all but accused the Pakistani government of harboring Bin Laden
[2]. His last city of refuge is not far from the capital of Islamabad, and three army regiments are garrisoned there. The fortified compound he lived in is only several hundred meters away from the boundary of the Pakistan Military Academy.[
Google map above] His body was taken to the
USS Carl Vinson and buried at sea after DNA analysis was performed to confirm his identity. Bin Laden's elimination raises the question of whether there remains any legitimate reason for US forces to stay in Afghanistan. The Al Qaeda organization, and indeed the entire Middle East, has
moved on since the peculiarly successful terror attacks of September 11, 2001; the shocking attacks succeeded through American ineptitude as much as careful planning and suicidal dedication of the jihadists. Bin Laden had become a figurehead, a legend in the minds of jihadists worldwide, but he no longer exclusively controlled the network as he did in the early days.
Ayman Al Zwahiri is reputed to be the next emir while Adnan el Shukrijumah is the chief of operations. Bin Laden's allies, the Taliban, still hold sway over a great deal of Afghanistan, and no foreign counterinsurgency short of popular support can dislodge a movement that is close to the hearts of many poor Afghans. The lesson of Vietnam which United States political and military leaders refuse to learn, is that only inhabitants, not putative imperial powers, can resolve civil wars and build nation states.
[1]Besides the aid Islamic "freedom fighters" (mujahadeen) received from the CIA in their struggle against the Soviets, Bin Laden provided important intelligence information about Kuwait to the US during Operation Desert Storm. US intelligence has no direct evidence that Osama Bin Laden participated in planning the attacks on the United States, other than an unauthenticated video released to Al-Jazeera in which he accepted responsibility; however, their is no doubt the organization he founded was responsible.
[2] Pakistan has received $20.7 billion in US aid since the terror attacks of 2001. It costs the US about $1 million a year to equip and support each of the 140,000 troops in Afghanistan. There are only about 100 Al Qaeda operatives in the country according to General David Petraeus. This kind of flagrant, disproportionate expenditure of national wealth is exactly what the masterminds of the terrorist network want to accomplish--the slow bleeding of America until it collapses beneath its own decadence. During the 2004 campaign for president, Senator John Kerry correctly surmised a war against international terrorism should be "occasionally military" but "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world." In other words, it should not be a military funding substitute for the Cold War; because like the Soviet Union earlier, America can no longer afford it.
