By JAMES TARANTO
Osama bin Laden never made it to Guantanamo Bay, but his arrival in hell appears to have been hastened by information gathered from the terrorists who are detained there. The Associated Press has the story:
Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden's most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed's successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.
A senior administration official told a White House briefing that "for years, we were unable to identify [the courier's] true name or his location":
Four years ago, we uncovered his identity, and for operational reasons, I can't go into details about his name or how we identified him, but about two years ago, after months of persistent effort, we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. Still we were unable to pinpoint exactly where they lived, due to extensive operational security on their part. The fact that they were being so careful reinforced our belief that we were on the right track.
Finally, last August, they found the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ABC News's Jake Tapper reports that in March, President Obama authorized "the development of a plan" to bomb the compound with 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions carried by B2 "stealth" bombers. "But when the president heard the compound would be reduced to rubble he chose not to pursue that option. . . . The president wanted proof" that bin Laden was dead. So he assembled a small death panel, which went to the compound in Pakistan and shot him.
That was surely wise. Perhaps the persistence of "birthers" led the president to anticipate that "deathers" would deny bin Laden is really inanimate. Sure enough, the Jakarta Globe reports that Luthfi Hasan, head of Indonesia's Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, "told journalists on Monday afternoon that there was a 'fifty-fifty' chance that Osama bin Laden had actually been killed by U.S. security forces. He said he needed evidence, including DNA tests, to be completely convinced that it was bin Laden."
Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, reports that NBC cut away from Donald Trump's "The Celebrity Apprentice" for live coverage of Obama's speech announcing the kill. As far as we know, however, Trump has not yet demanded to see the death certificate.
"His death does not mark the end of our effort," Obama noted in his speech. "There's no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must--and we will--remain vigilant at home and abroad."
But there's no question that bin Laden's death is of enormous symbolic importance. As the New York Times notes in a lengthy obituary, bin Laden aimed to fundamentally transform the Muslim world:
Bin Laden . . . saw the retreat of the Soviets [from Afghanistan] as an affirmation of Muslim power and an opportunity to recreate Islamic political power and topple infidel governments through jihad, or holy war.
He declared to an interviewer, "I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America."
In its place, he built his own legend, modeling himself after the Prophet Muhammad, who in the seventh century led the Muslim people to rout the infidels, or nonbelievers, from North Africa and the Middle East. As the Koran had been revealed to Muhammad amid intense persecution, Bin Laden saw his own expulsions during the 1990s--from Saudi Arabia and then Sudan--as affirmation of himself as a chosen one.
In his vision, he would be the "emir," or prince, in a restoration of the khalifa, a political empire extending from Afghanistan across the globe. "These countries belong to Islam," he told the same interviewer in 1998, "not the rulers."
Bin Laden's death was a long time coming--it's been more than 9½ years since the Sept. 11 attacks--but perhaps it is fortuitous that it occurred amid the "Arab spring." Bin Laden was right that these countries don't belong to the rulers, some of whom by now are ex-rulers. But he'll never be emir, now that he's an ex-human.
The killing of bin Laden raises two interesting questions for the U.S. First, what does it mean for our involvement in Afghanistan? Public support for that war has been declining, and it isn't hard to imagine that there will be a push, as blogger Tom Maguire puts it, "to implement . . . the much-discussed but never implemented strategy in Vietnam--declare victory and leave."
Second, how does this affect President Obama's political fortunes? In the short term, there's very little doubt it will be beneficial. The president suddenly looks highly competent, belying the Jimmy Carter comparisons that had become ubiquitous by last week. Here's Glenn Reynolds in yesterday's Washington Examiner:
On foreign policy--another Carter weak point--Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as "reformers") took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.
As it turned out, he was able to do considerably more than wish. On the other hand, those now declaring Obama unbeatable surely are engaged in wishful thinking. A foreign-policy success does not preclude a one-term presidency: Just ask George H.W. Bush. Even Carter had the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
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Associated PressA Gitmo detainee: the agony of defeat.
One thing that does seem unlikely is that Obama will pay a political price for his jejune posturing against Guanantamo Bay. In fact, this may turn out to be a skillful example of triangulation. His promises to shutter the detention facility and bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists to New York for trial made his hard-left base happy; his failure to carry it out satisfied almost everyone else. And the anti-antiterror left is happy to blame others for Obama's broken promise, as evidenced by any New York Times editorial on the subject.
And now that bin Laden is dead, Obama is relieved of the headache of deciding where to put him on trial.
Our Friends the Pakistanis
Last month the New York Times reported that relations between Washington and Islamabad were near the breaking point:
Last month the New York Times reported that relations between Washington and Islamabad were near the breaking point:
Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.
But yesterday Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. How involved were the Pakistanis in the successful operation? "It's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding," President Obama said in his speech last night.
The Times reports today that "an American official said the Pakistani government was not informed about the strike in advance." A statement from Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs takes no direct credit for the raid:
In an intelligence driven operation, Osama Bin Ladin was killed in the surroundings of Abbotabad in the early hours of this morning. This operation was conducted by the US forces in accordance with declared US policy that Osama bin Ladin will be eliminated in a direct action by the US forces, wherever found in the world.
The ministry does proclaim that al Qaeda "had declared war on Pakistan," echoing President Obama's statement. Meanwhile, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reports that Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, struck a defensive tone in a phone interview:
"If Whitey Bulger can live undetected by American police for so long, why can't Osama Bin Laden live undetected by Pakistani authorities?" Haqqani asked. Bulger, the former head of Boston's Winter Hill gang, was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List in mid-1999, two months after Bin Laden himself first appeared on the list. Haqqani continued, "The fact is, Mafia figures manage to do this sort of thing in Brooklyn, and Pakistan is a country that does not have the highly-developed law enforcement capabilities that your country possesses."
Haqqani went on to say, "President Obama has answered the question about Pakistan's role. It wouldn't have been possible to get Bin Laden without Pakistan's help. People are piling on this one, but the fact is, it is very plausible for someone to live undetected for long periods of time."
As John Fund notes in today's Political Diary (subscribe here):
The massive compound where bin Laden was hiding was located just 800 yards from Pakistan's Military Academy--its West Point--and was apparently built for the purpose of harboring him in 2005 at a cost of at least $1 million. Abbotabad, the city where bin Laden was killed, is known as a retirement community for Pakistani's military elite. Were elements of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, aware of his presence in Abbotabad? Were other high-level Pakistani officials?
Note that when Obama gave credit to the Pakistanis for having "helped lead" the U.S. to the bin Laden compound, he was completely vague about the timing. The help could have come years ago. It looks to us as though Obama is offering Islamabad a chance to save face--and to judge by Haqqani's comments to Goldberg, they are taking it. In private, though, the Pakistanis may be getting a much sterner message.
Too Good to Be Happy
In his address last night, President Obama evoked "the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11." It's hard to blame him: A president whose policies have been divisively ideological had accomplished something everyone could celebrate. Well, not everyone. Over at Salon, they're not happy, and they want you to know it's because they're better than you.
In his address last night, President Obama evoked "the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11." It's hard to blame him: A president whose policies have been divisively ideological had accomplished something everyone could celebrate. Well, not everyone. Over at Salon, they're not happy, and they want you to know it's because they're better than you.
David Sirota scolds Americans for not responding with "somber relief":
Instead, the Washington press corps--helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House--insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden's more enduring victory--a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.
For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. . . . But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys.
Sirota has unwittingly done a public service here. He has killed off the worst post-9/11 cliché by reducing it to complete absurdity: If the terrorists lose and we're happy, the terrorists have won. Brilliant!
Also at Salon, Glenn Greenwald preens that he isn't happy:
I personally don't derive joy or an impulse to chant boastfully at the news that someone just got two bullets put in their skull--no matter who that someone is--but that reaction is inevitable: it's the classic case of raucously cheering in a movie theater when the dastardly villain finally gets his due.
Oh well, to each his own. We personally find that Greenwald's colicky mood enhances our elation.
It also reminds us of how terribly wrong Salon has been over the years. Way back in 2001, we made a note of a piece that ran there on Sept. 14 of that year, planning to use it when bin Laden was captured or killed. It's titled "An Afghan-American Speaks" and is written by Tamim Ansary:
Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.
And guess what: That's bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the West. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose; that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong--in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean--but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.
Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
He was right about the need for ground troops, but somehow we managed to do it without conquering Pakistan, going to war with Islam, or wreaking a holocaust. Then there's this piece from 1998, after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania:
Unless the Clinton administration can come up with some hard evidence that bin Laden is in fact calling the shots of a vast new anti-American terrorist network, all the present allegations and faceless intelligence-source leaks claiming facts too secret and explosive to be revealed should be taken with a grain of salt.
Bin Laden may be a dangerous anti-American zealot with a mouth as big as his bankroll. But the evidence so far does not support him being a cerebral Islamic Dr. No moving an army of terrorist troops on a vast world chessboard to checkmate the United States.
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