Death of a Salesman
Al Qaeda's big man is dead. The chief peddler of the efficacy of terrorism. Dead on the floor of his big house Osama bin Laden resisted assault but was unarmed, U.S. officials say - The Washington Post That house, iconic brutalist in its barbed wire compound. It's size, its fortress-like, jail-like nature BBC News - Bin Laden: Pakistan intelligence agency admits failures. It reminded me once I put a finger to the association of nothing more the Haitian national jail in Port au Prince which I had seen in a number of pictures last year. Touched by the same architectural djinn of design. I always pictured him in a house very much like this one. With roughly that level of amenities present, perhaps a little more isolated. It was a muzzled end for the salesman of death. Checking to see if his video charisma still held up, trying to sound still the taunting franchiser of fear. Through ever more clipped and irregular missives. Pacing daily in a silent garden Death of Osama bin Laden: Phone call pointed U.S. to compound and to "the pacer" - The Washington Post, in a green leafy suburb belonging real power-brokers of the region. My guess frankly had been for him to turn up in a town like Banjul in the end, obscurity and space along the edge. The Abbottobad cantonment, that was a high risk choice A Look at bin Laden's Compound - WSJ.com. This is a town, an old hill station town from the time of British rule, along a modern highway with schools, colleges, hospitals, golf courses, tennis courts, even a hockey arena! And as well the Pakistani military academy. At some level, but what I coulnt't say, the Pakistani army and its government-within-a-government the ISI (Inter Service Intelligence) were involved . A passive neglect perhaps, like Nelson putting a telescope to his blind eye. But it seems a drawn conclusion that some in the Pakistani government were facilitating Bin Laden's stay, with some degree of active hospitality. Others may have known only there were things and places not to look at. To be fair its not a great shock, most people knew Pakistan was playing a strange game for years U.S. Support for Pakistan: A Long Messy History : The New Yorker. They sent a team of feral assassins into Mumbai to murder in a three day spree hundreds of ordinary people just two years ago. To send a message. The competency of more than one terrorist group in the region was gained at the guiding hand of the ISI. DP18Waldman latest.doc - Google Doc
There was some minor controversy attached to the nomenclature of the mission the mission namely that Bin laden or the mission had been code named Geronomo. It in fact was a sub code for the target, denoted by Jackpot, being dealt with. The mission itself was called Neptune Spear Death of Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia. I think the use of Geronimo was a nod to Robert Kaplans 2005 book Imperial grunts : the American military on the ground (Book, 2005) [WorldCat.org] a book that dealt extensively with the evolution and use of special forces. Particular with the notion of moving the war on terror largely into their domain and regarding resistant non-integrating actors as so many Bad Indians wanted dead or alive (dealers choice). Call it ironic commentary on a world view they don't necessarily disagree with. An encompassing Manifest Destiny The mission was carried out by Navy Seals a command that has evolved from amphibious landing sappers to the most trained and adept special operations unit the US has. Rounding out DevGru assets is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment dedicated to deliver and extracting the forces. Loss of a helicopter notwithstanding the mission was a success. It accomplished what it set out to accomplish. So successful in fact that there was an unfortunate tendency to over-share operational detail in the immediate aftermath (at least the mission got off the ground without being leaked to have an aftermath). This was equal opportunity auto-release, the first leak to the press came came from one of Rumsfeld's people. Everyone wanted to know exactly how it went down, but the capacity for such operations is reduced that way. Additionally if you get ahead of the facts in "background" briefings you only create an ill-disciplined mess that requires untangling and often more unnecessary disclosure to sort out White House goes silent on bin Laden raid - The Washington Post. The administration claims their original intent was to stand by a sparse narrative, but that they got pushed off their game Robert Gates: We Had Agreed We Wouldn't Release Details About the Operation Against OBL But 'That All Fell Apart' - Political Punch. They should have anticipated the media frenzy this produced, and not end up in a situation where people felt they were owed a narrative or a handy and immediate PR exploitation.
As the investigative world -- journalistic and ex officio -- begin an excavation of the trail and activities of Bin Laden these last nine years. The most prevalent reaction of most was "About Time" and "Why so long?" Well, it's still a big world out there. Osama Bin Laden's time seems to have involved a brief period of field living at the beginning, a warriors life. Followed by more permanent residence(s). These living arrangements likely adhered to strict underground cells procedures at first, gradually that protocol would lessen through complacency and laziness. At the same time the process of sifting through enormous amounts of intelligence: leads, interrogations, interviews, and intercepts. The yards and miles of aerial photo reconnaissance data ground on. I would argue that it simply took these years to gather and sort through all that information, that no one "gave up" Bin Laden for any obscure reason . It took as long as it took, and the dragnet in the end snagged him. The role of of "enhanced interrogation" is unclear. I haven't seen anything that indicated that this investigation was solely or irrevocably was set on its final path through the magic of water torture. There is a logic that pretends to an unambiguity of directness and action that does not really exist. That if you believe in the existence of certain information, tear it out of whomever you think has it. Apologists beware, this is not even a slippery slope it is an abyss at your heels. Violence and denial. One step back and you fall forever. You become must be fought to regain a just world.
For what its worth and for how the Pentagon sees it the length of time it took to find Bin Laden extends to the global war on terror in general, to all its sundry insurgencies. These are their long wars. They flare up but they render their host societies damaged and unproductive and eventually are run to ground, as long as we are patient and let them keep at it in their own way they believe they have a handle on it From Roman Legions to Navy SEALs: Military Raiding and its Discontents - Adam Elkus - International - The Atlantic:.
Among some observers there was as degree of churlishness on display. An inability to acknowledge the end of Bin Laden at this point in time as a positive accomplishment. Under this government under this President. This may owe to their believing their own BS that the President is incapable of decision.
Bin Laden was going to die. He made the world his battlefield. There was no place he could go now, no safe rest supply base. What al Qaeda means. No particular value to his capture, to hold or try. Nothing he could to alter his fate once we caught up with him. In a sense the bullet that ended his life started it's flight the moment the 11 September hijackers got up from their seats. Even as singular as this case is, it pulls into question the wisdom politics ethics and legality of assassinations. Many of these targeted killings involve extended active breeches of national sovereignty Targeted Killing LRB blog. Additionally they undertaken in the absence of complete information - and that in partial review. All are extrajudicial, and not all we kill are guilty. Even if we freely overlook that, others won't. The sanguinity of our methods may be our legacy.
No where is this base indulgence seen clearer than in the clamor for the death pictures of Bin Laden. Photographic evidential proof is insisted upon, demanded, to serve the blood lust of the doubting Thomases. It is a strange desire and an unintentional deification. Outside of a certain ghoulishness it also marks an elevation of revenge as a higher motivation. As well I think it is a misreading of evil. There is evil in this world that does not require utter individual psychopathy. It only requires simple or subconscious desire, rationalization and opportunity. Bin Laden and other the "monsters" of history are in the end just men. They lived lives that were in more ways than not little different from the ones we live. They approached decisions and made their choices with the same facilties of reason we have. What is in any of us, is somewhere in all of us. All portraits are mirrors. Don't look to a photograph to give you the relief of their otherness, Bin Laden died with a human face.
The great shame in all of this is that we can look back and conjecture the existence of a Bin Laden era. A life time or at least a childhood for many, the various segments of the millennials. Stalked by the spectre of unfathomable enemy. An echo of cold war annihilation in the form of an glowering obtuse theocrat holding an AK-74U. At the center of this lies a large but dubious and unexceptional achievement one that no other generation of Americans has the misfortune of attaining: to make peace with a state of permanent war.
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