On Osama Bin Laden's Death

Just about a year ago today, I was watching the Celebrity Apprentice in beautiful Madison, WI.  We were in the midst of another exciting boardroom showdown, where Mr. Trump was surely praising Meatloaf and Gary Busey as “transformative artistic minds” and “geniuses”. Suddenly , the broadcast stopped and we were taken to a news bulletin. The NBC anchors breathlessly reported that they were expecting to cut live to the White House where President Obama had a momentous announcement, though they didn’t know what exactly he was announcing. I had recently gotten into Twitter, so I immediately started doing some research to see what the instant consensus about what Obama’s announcement was going to be. The responses ranged from pessimistic prognostications about a coming terrorist attack to the discovery of WMD in Iraq to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Eventually it became clear that Obama was going to announce the death of Osama. It was a transformative moment for me, a time when I realized that Twitter was truly the best repository for breaking news.

            At the time I didn’t really know what to think, and I still don’t. Obviously fuck Osama Bin Laden, but the celebratory atmosphere around his death was weird. 10 years after 9/11 his death didn’t pack the same emotional weight, I had long given up the visceral anger I felt on that tragic day. In many ways the years after 9/11 couldn’t have gone any better for Osama, he drew the U.S. into two unwinnable wars and saw the collapse of the U.S. economy. Al Qaeda had largely been marginalized, my professor Alfred McCoy estimated that it was only about 100 men spread across the globe, but they had baited the U.S. into eroding constitutional rights at home, and committing war crimes abroad. The death of Bin Laden probably didn’t have a major effect on the logistics of global terror, and certainly didn’t lead to any draw down in the war on terror.

            Isn’t it interesting the amazing symbolic power murder can have. A decade ago, terrorists flew our own civilian planes into the military and financial centers of our country. I don’t mean to belittle the tragedy of 9/11, but it was largely a symbolic act. It illustrated that the impenetrable fortress America wasn’t quite so safe, that the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on defense couldn’t protect from some wily men with boxcutters. Now a decade later, it was us celebrating the symbolic victory. Bin Laden wasn’t involved in the day to day operations of Al Qaeda, if indeed that organization even had day to day operations. Osama was a symbol to people across the globe that America could be attacked and you could get away with it.  The U.S. finally got their man, and it was certainly a victory, but like 9/11 it was a victory of the pyrrhic variety.