Today was supposed to be a quiet study day before my final exam of the year on Tuesday morning. But I knew as soon as I sat down in the study room and booted up Chrome that I was going to get very little studying done today. Almost everyone on the planet knows what happened to Osama Bin Laden (OBL) today, so I'm not going to belabor you with the details.
Almost immediately, one of my friends posted this quote on my facebook wall:
"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure" - Mark Twain
I replayed this quote through my head about 50 times today, so it obviously hit home. I have to confess that I spent the first hour after hearing news just reading updates and trying to come to grips with the knot in my stomach. Basically, I had been thinking about this day for so long that I didn't know how to react. Should I be happy? Somber? In the end I settled on an attempt to remain partial and analytical. Its stuff like this that hammers home how much of a Myers-Briggs INTP I actually am.
Which brings us to the question on everybody's mind, what does Osama's death actually mean? Is this the actual end of the Global War on Terror? Will America be packing up and departing Afghanistan and the region for good? Or is this like the capture of Saddam Hussein, a feel good moment that has little long term impact. A lot of people who are much smarter than me have already commented on this, but this wouldn't be a blog if I wasn't willing to throw out my two cents worth.
In the now infamous words of Joe Biden, I think this really is "A Big F%&*ing Deal." Not because Osama was that important to Al Qaeda or global terrorism. Most evidence seems to suggest that both he and his organization are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Fareed Zakaria has written about Al Qaeda's diminishing importance extensively. The important thing about what happened today is the fact that the American public got the win it needed to move on with its life. I have to admit I was a little bit disturbed, if not at all surprised, by the television shots of Americans publicly celebrating the news outside the White House and in Times Square. But if this is what we need to bring some closure to the gaping wound that has gnawed at us since September 2001, then so be it.
In retrospect, the entire idea of a Global War On Terror (GWOT) was probably a mistake. As Francis Fukuyama once observed, declaring a war on terror is like declaring a war on submarines. You can declare war on countries, groups, or individuals, but you can't declare war on an entire concept. The US has spent something $1.6 trillion and lost over 7211 uniformed personnel. No one knows how many people have died in Iraq, but the estimate is around 150,000. Tens of thousands of civilians and local security forces have also died in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a score of other countries. I don't think for a second that all of this was preventable. There was never going to be a negotiated settlement with Al Qaeda and its affiliates. The Iraq invasion was almost certainly a mistake, but I don't see how the US had any choice about intervening in Afghanistan. Of course many would argue that hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make an all out effort to learn from our mistakes.
While all of the focus has been on Iraq and Afghanistan, much too little attention has been paid to the success stories. There are many, but my favorite is Indonesia. After the Bali bombings in 2002 there was a very real concern that Al Qaeda off shoots like Jemaah Islamiyah would unleash a campaign of violence across the archipelago. While there have been several more bombings, most recently in Jakarta in July 2009, JI is now pretty much a non-entity. This didn't happen because the US sent in SEAL teams to whack the bad guys like they just did in Abbottabad. The work was done by Indonesian police and military forces (as well as a civil society which decided that the goals of JI were not in their interest and took a courageous stand against them). Many civilians and security forces died in the effort and we should never forget their sacrifice. The US did assist in providing information, training, and equipment, but went out of its way to stay in the shadows.
I like the Indonesian case study because I think it represents the way that the US should handle the way forward. Its lessons obviously don't translate perfectly into a place like Afghanistan where the local government has a fraction of the capacity, but its still important to think about. One of my all time favorite sayings is from T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame):
"Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly."
I liked this quote so much that I hung it above my door when I worked in Riyadh in order to constantly remind myself of my role. I think its safe to say that Americans have a tendency to go "all in" when they get involved in something. I think the last decade has hopefully made many of us realize the importance of letting others do things, even if they are done imperfectly. And hopefully now that Americans have the victory they have waited so long for, there will be an acceptance of the need to begin scaling back direct involvement in Afghanistan and other similar locals.
But we'll have to wait and see. As they say, International Relations is the novel that never ends.
It's funny, my reaction was mostly surprise that anybody still cared. I don't really begrudge the American people their day of celebration; if that's what we need to finally get over this thing, then so be it. The world's certainly a better place without UBL in it.
ReplyDeleteBut I figured out a long time ago that anybody who gives a damn about UBL was just playing into his hands. 1.6 Trillion dollars and 7611+ American lives to get this guy, just because he dared us to do it? Frankly, I'd say he won.
For the record, I thought the whole Iraq adventure was a bad idea as early as November 2002. Not that I didn't end up bobbing around the NAG anyway a few months later, when one could walk from Kuwayt to Bushehr on the decks of ships without getting one's feet wet, watching the missiles fly up like flaming arrows in the night and watching them land hours later on CNN...
The success stories are only where the culture has not been Wahabbised. A great example of how the local Islamic culture has been bought over by Gulf money is in Kerala, India. Muslim women, who till recently never covered their faces, today cannot be seen without hijabs. The true success of peaceful Islam will arise only if these hardline cultures withdraw and give back space to the peaceful Islamic culture. To be fair, Islam spread in the East not so much at the edge of the sword as through the pens, drums and flutes of the Mystics, as well as the trade inlfuences.
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