Today President Barack Obama announced the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. After eluding capture for almost ten years, and following months of top-secret surveillance and detailed planning by the Pentagon, he was killed by a member of the US military's SEAL Team Six - with some reluctant assistance (or perhaps none at all) from the Pakistani government. Reaction to the news of Bin Laden’s death (at least in the West) appears to be one approaching almost total euphoria. That is understandable. For many people justice has at last been done. But it is not quite as simple as that.
Before we get too carried away we should take stock of a global system in which little has fundamentally altered. While the iconic value of Bin Laden’s death is self-evident it is by no means a strategic game-changer. In some respects it is irrelevant. Like the many-headed mythical Hydra of Greek mythology Al-Qaeda has spawned a global network of agile affiliate enterprises hell bent on disrupting lives and causing havoc wherever they can. While this ideologically networked group of fanatical offspring may still pledge symbolic allegiance to the Al-Qaeda “brand”, myriad smaller cells increasingly act autonomously, receiving nothing in terms of financial or logistical support from the parent organisation.
The death of Bin Laden may well provide an emotional setback for some of these terrorist groups and their interests. But to a great extent his messages and influence were already discredited, even in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Indeed the most radically anti-Western polemic (even from Muslim religious leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran) categorically rejected the Takfir doctrines pursued by Al-Qaeda’s conservative leaders years ago. Far more pertinent are the peaceful protests currently sweeping across the Arab world. These uprisings have shown young people everywhere that liberation from persecution and serfdom is in the hands of those who seek it. The so-called Arab Spring has made Bin Laden’s darkly doctrinaire views utterly irrelevant to all but a few hardened zealots.
The genesis of terrorism goes back centuries of course. It has been part of the human condition throughout recorded history. On September 11, 2001, however, human progress seemed to descend into an altogether darker void.
But as most of the Western world watched in horror at the scenes being played out on the East coast of the US a far deeper tragedy was unfolding – a tragedy which some of us are still trying to express and from which recovery is by no means certain. For the tragedy to which I refer is the folly of man’s inhumanity to man, the utter futility of conflict and the mindless calls for vengeance. This is the deeper tragedy, arising from our most primitive instincts, we must all ultimately confront.
The images of 9/11 are incised into the mind. Like the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, everyone has a story of where they were that fateful day. Yet now, when one chapter closes and we look with hope towards a future where we can all live together in peace, the real legacy of 9/11 hangs like a shadow over our civilisation.
Ten years ago Al-Qaeda's high profile figurehead provided the US administration with the pretext to commence its calamitous hostilities across the greater Middle East. Predictably Washington's wars provided terrorist outfits everywhere with new recruits and burgeoning support as well as prolonging a cycle of violence that appeared to know no end. Today, once again, Osama Bin Laden presents us with the pretext to think again - but to do things differently this time.
Fresh opportunities have emerged and we must seize the day. The choice is stark. We can persist in our bloody and humiliating way to continue prosecuting this so-called “war on terror” – a war without end, executed in a mood of compounding fear and desperation and from which the most sane among us accept it will be impossible to extract victory. Or we can reimagine our collective purpose and the relationships we most desire with our fellow human beings by celebrating the integral nature of what it means to be compassionate human beings.
If we set our minds to it we can envisage a far less violent and more tolerant future. For example we could enter constructive dialogue with those whose views run counter to our own, seeking to include and transcend differences, rather than waging war as an economic imperative and as a knee-jerk reaction to difference. We could build schools and hospitals rather than expand our arsenals. We could make innovative technologies and medicines available to those less fortunate than ourselves rather than continuing to deny them the most basic of life’s necessities.
I recognise that will take courage and a spirit of generosity that we will need to consciously nurture. But surely that is what leadership is all about? Besides there are far more serious, potentially catastrophic, failures we need to attend to with a similar level of passion and commitment: food and water shortages, climate change, pollution, declining oil reserves....
Of course to pursue peace rather than conflict is not solely our decision. Similar opportunities to think differently and to change direction have been afforded others, particularly those in countries like Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been ravaged by war. It is quite feasible, for example, that leaders of the Taliban may now be more receptive to negotiating some form of power-sharing arrangement in exchange for closing terrorist training camps and curtailing the use of their lands for the export of terror. It is equally possible that the focus of the powerful US industrial war machine will shift to Pakistan, especially given the level of support and protection Bin Laden possibly received from certain sectors of the Pakistani intelligence and military communities.
Whatever happens Bin Laden’s name, his aura and his perceived martyrdom will continue to resonate for a few years yet. In the long term, however, it is not the hunting down and slaying of one man that matters but rather the various autopoietic transitions taking place across Arab and Muslim societies. The most effective power is that wielded through peace. Ordinary people protesting peacefully against oppression and injustice will eventually close history’s page on Al-Qaeda’s particular brand of terror.
In the meantime we have a profoundly important role to play. We must do our utmost to ensure these transitions occur peacefully and compassionately, even if our own current “brand” of democracy is not the end result. Putting an end to the excessive waste, collective insanity and moral failure of endless conflict by eradicating the militarisation of democracy is the most important challenge facing us. If we cannot change our priorities there can be no hope for a brighter future. The war-mongering of old empires will continue to impede real progress by turning the world upside down.
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