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SNIP

September 25, 2006


Osama bin Laden, R.I.P.?

No way, José: we created him – yet we'll never kill him


by Justin Raimondo


It is, of course, purely coincidental that news of the alleged death of Osama bin Laden – or, at least, his imminent demise – has been "leaked" by the Saudis via a French intelligence document just as the American election season hits its stride. This time, he's supposedly dead or dying of typhoid, although the source of his reported health problems varies with the teller. And, some speculate, this could be just an effort to smoke him out – to motivate him to issue a new video, the first in two years, and therefore provide his hunters with possible clues to his whereabouts and condition.

Nothing about this rumor is at all clear. What is breathtakingly obvious, however, is that bin Laden is not only a symbol to many Muslims of resistance to U.S. domination – he is a living reminder of this administration's complete failure when it comes to the GOP's signature issue: national security and the "war on terrorism." For years, the more addlepated wing of the War Party has been stoutly maintaining that OBL is dead, in spite of audio messages in which he has spoken. Now they have another excuse to trot out this tired line, as if the death of a single man could possibly improve their rapidly sinking position. Since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, the level of terror in that country has risen; bin Laden's death, if it has occurred, is likely to register a similar uptick worldwide. We are, it seems, caught in a conundrum.

The great problem of the War Party is that they chose to fight the wrong war. We were struck by bin Laden, and we went for Saddam's throat – while letting the real author of 9/11 get clean away. Instead of strengthening our ties with local Arab governments and using our influence and regional allies to hunt down and kill the real terrorists, we marshaled inordinate resources to accomplish regime change in Iraq and succeeded only in strengthening al-Qaeda. Or, rather, we succeeded in confirming the idea and action program represented by bin Laden and his followers, who enjoy growing support far beyond the periphery of their actual organization.

In an important sense, bin Laden, the individual, matters not. His significance transcends his own person. Whether he is alive or dead will not impact the larger struggle one way or the other. In the short term, however, rumors of his death, albeit vague to the point of insubstantiality, do serve a purpose, and that is to shore up the rapidly collapsing American strategy in the Middle East. If he is truly dead, or dying, Washington can claim, albeit implausibly, to have driven him into the ground, to have so exhausted and debilitated him that his health simply gave out: it's a "victory" of sorts, if a rather threadbare one. On the other hand, I tend to agree with Michael Scheuer, until 1999 the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, who avers:



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