Washington’s ten-year quest to neutralize Osama bin Laden has finally born fruit. Even before the infamous author of the 9-11 attacks was cornered and killed this weekend, his terrorist organization had been gradually dismembered by Predator strikes and special-forces operations. The search for bin Laden is a case study in perseverance, one that demanded extraordinary sacrifice from many thousands of warfighters and intelligence operatives, and cost many billions of dollars.
But precisely for that reason, it is hard to take comfort from news that Osama bin Laden is dead. It has taken the world’s greatest military power a decade to track down the tallest man in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), sending an implicit message to like-minded zealots that terrorism is a remarkably effective tool for changing the world. The on-going impact of Al Qaeda’s thinly resourced foot-soldiers on global security has to be a worrisome sign in a world where new technology is empowering extremists of every stripe.
Within minutes after it was disclosed that bin Laden had been taken down in an affluent neighborhood 35 miles from Pakistan’s capital, pundits were already asking the question of how much the Pakistani intelligence service knew about his whereabouts, and for how long. We’ll probably never know the answer to that question, but the fact that recriminations between partners in the counter-terror campaign are likely to persist long after bin Laden is gone underscores the effectiveness of ruthless, elusive actors in undermining democratic governments. It turns out that democracies just aren’t very good at dealing with enemies who refuse to play by the rules.
But the damage that bin Laden’s tactics have done to America’s ties with other governments pales in comparison with what we have allowed him to do to our own economy and society. The years before 9-11 now look like a golden age of American affluence and influence that collapsed with startling rapidity in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. We cannot blame Al Qaeda for the dot.com bust, the sub-prime meltdown, and the fact that America’s share of global economic output has fallen from a third to a quarter of the total in only ten years, but there is good reason to believe that the distraction of policymakers by overseas threats had something to do with Washington’s economic mis-steps in the first decade after what had come to be called the American Century. And we most definitely can blame Al Qaeda for a sizable chunk of the federal government’s debt, since the war in Afghanistan was a direct response to 9-11 and the war in Iraq would have been politically unsalable without it.
Beyond that, the fear that has informed America’s domestic security arrangements and self-image since 9-11 reflects just how hard it is to maintain an open society when a handful of committed crazies are determined to force change. Every month brings us new images of how the threat of extremist violence has torn our social fabric, from the photos of tortured detainees at Abu Graib prison to the viral video of a small child being frisked as she boarded a recent airline flight. In general, we have managed to maintain our humanity and respond to provocations both at home and abroad in a measured, proportional way, but there is little doubt the terrorists have changed how we think and how we behave.
So while I share the widespread admiration for the skill and precision with which Navy Seals managed to dispatch the world’s most notorious terrorist, I’m also dismayed by how long it took to get him and disturbed by the message that the resilience of his organization sends to the rest of the world. We have defeated a terrorist in the tactical sense but failed in the strategic sense by allowing him to demonstrate the limits of American power. When future historians recount what happened to America in the first decade of the new millennium, they will point to the attacks Osama bin Laden mounted on 9-11 as a turning point in global history, and see in Washington’s response a partial explanation for the nation’s subsequent decline.
(Reference : http://blogs.forbes.com)
