After OBL

Obama’s critics on the left have approximately as much influence in the US as a fart in a windstorm, and this was the case long before they got OBL. The great force pulling the acceptable frame of American discourse to the right is the implacable lunacy of the Republicans and their voter base, and this gives its influence a big, big temporary hit. Obama may or may not do anything constructive with that, but politically I see it as, for now, all to the good.

I’m not sure how temporary the boost will be for Obama. I read a story this morning that said that the US recovered OBL’s hard drive during the raid along with hundreds of others throughout the compound that he was housed in. So, the operation not only produced the death of Bin Laden, but it produced a deluge of intelligence as well. If the intelligence is actionable and Obama can succeed in reminding the public where the intelligence came from, this might produce a lasting effect for his administration.

Simple logic leads to the conclusion that the terrorist threat was vastly, and deliberately, exaggerated to feed the US defense establishment and advance political agendas. TSA tests of airline security repeatedly succeed in smuggling simulated bomb components aboard aircraft, and thousands of unguarded US infrastructure sites are easy targets for even the most bumbling and under-financed terrorist. With truckloads of drugs crossing the porous American borders regularly, the inability of Al Qaeda to bring one man with a rifle and a box of bullets into the US is clearly at variance with the bogeyman story line. Given these obvious vulnerabilities, the fact that there have been no significant attacks is proof of the mythical character of the threat.

Americans have chosen to adopt a common mythology of vulnerability to terror as a fundamental component of national identity. Like the Red Scare, this national paranoia serves many powerful interests and justifies all manner of mischief by the US government. Thus the terror myth will long outlive Bin Laden, as the myth worshipers eagerly await Bin Laden’s successors.

it’s al-Zawahiri we really should be afraid of. He’s twice as evil, and five times more powerful

Don’t count on it

I’m fairly sure that Henri was being ironic.

Slight digression re the original post: By contrast, bin Laden was unsurprisingly, the object of more national fear and hatred than any figure since Hitler or Stalin.

Was Stalin the object of national fear and hatred in the US? My understanding of the early years of the Cold War is that US public opinion only got properly Red-phobic post-1953 (not least because of the positive Uncle Joe stereotype concocted during WWII), and that even then the Soviet Machine and Reds Under Beds were always the focus of home-front fear rather than Hitler/Saddam/OBL style demonisation of Soviet leaders. I’d be genuinely interested in evidence to the contrary though.

fn2. It’s interesting to ask how history would have changed if the military had done as good a job with the Iran hostage rescue ordered by Carter as they did in the present case.

A SF story by Kim Stanley Robinson called “Remaking history” explores a world where this scenario happens. The actual story is about people talking about the “Great Man in history” theory as a film based on the successful hostage rescue is being developed.

it looks like the search is on for another enemy. Where will the projective imagination of the American national psyche light next?

There are so many easy choices:

1. The yellow peril – as Asian economies outperform the sclerotic US, the demonization of Asians is an obvious political move.

2. The Hispanic hordes – overrunning our borders and threatening the sacred whiteness of America, this threat cannot be neglected.

3. Ungrateful blacks – if they even hint at making trouble, just because 75% of their young people are unemployed, they will need to be taught a lesson.

4. The Rooskies – controlling Europe’s gas supplies and an increasing share of oil, the Russians are ready for a repeat performance as America’s #1 national threat.

The Republicans are, with one stroke, completely unable to own national security as an issue and campaign on some supposed toughness. They’ll try, but it’ll be laughable. The question is just whether that will matter by November 2012.

I don’t understand the logic here. After all, as Elliott Abrams has already pointed out, the hunt for bin Laden began under Bush, so W. should get some of the credit. The rest of the credit, of course, goes to Ronald Reagan, for issuing bin Laden a special low-interest, low-fees FreedomUSA credit card in the first place, which enabled our intelligence services to track his online purchases over the past ten years.

Bill (Benzon), I think that genuinely misunderstands the American psyche. Americans are a bunch of ignorant motherfuckers who never learned to distrust their government when it announces a new bogeyman. People believed Saddam Hussein was like Hitler because their government told them that. They would believe that you were the new Hitler just as easily. But if our leaders don’t demonize anyone, then it’s not like people will be out there looking for a new Hitler on their own.

Osama bin Laden is different. He really was our enemy, and even well-informed Americans who don’t actively wish brown people harm are glad he’s dead.

“I suspect that the lack of Republican credibility on foreign policy (and for that matter, the birther issue) will encourage critical analysis of their fraudulent claims on economics as well.”

That would of course be a welcome knock-on effect. But I’m hardly sanguine about it, because the main reason for the fraudulent claims remains: those with great wealth want to keep and increase it.

From where do we imagine the criticism of those claims will emerge? — The means to promote or criticize the claims remain in the hands of the extremely wealthy.

it’s clear that their sources are trying to make claims for intelligence extracted under torture even though (on my reading) they didn’t actually get anything useful from these sources

Emptywheel is, as you’d guess, the go-to site on that issue.

He chose cowboy justice (assassination) over caputure and trial.

Good lord, you and Paul Campos. I’ve seen one Reuters report quoting some anon “national security official” claiming that the order was to kill only. It’s going to take more than that for me to believe that the SEALs were really told not to accept a surrender by OBL — not that anyone expected OBL would do any such thing.

23: I think it is obvious that the “Capture or kill” order was winkingly delivered with an implied “…and no one is going to ask questions if it is the latter.”

If there’s anyone whose death it makes sense to gloat about this week, it is California white supremacist Jeff Hall. As in 2001, or 1991, or 1981, or 1971, the danger we face in this country is not from external threats, but from our homegrown fascists. Admittedly, it would be nice to see children of somewhat more dangerous racists kill their fathers, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

“I think it is obvious”

I think that tells us something about you, but not about the SEALs or their orders.

I am not in a hurry to declare these men and their commanders to be war criminals.

Leinad, I think there is a legitimate difference between a “priority” to capture and being willing to accept a surrender. There was little reason to expect that OBL would offer to surrender, and the circumstances were not conducive to negotiating that issue with him.

If he really was unarmed, as we are now hearing, I suspect the SEALs were about as surprised by that fact as I am. The man had gotten awfully slack. No AK47 leaning beside the bed? That in itself would be, I think, circumstantial evidence that he’d been living in this compound for years, and/or expected protection from Pakistan.

“The great force pulling the acceptable frame of American discourse to the right is the implacable lunacy of the Republicans and their voter base”

No, the great force pulling American discourse to the right is corporate America, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow from it into the coffer of politicians of both parties, and the trillions of dollars that flow back to it in return. Republican and Democrat has nothing to do with it; ownership of the state by the corporate class is a bipartisan phenomenon.

@18:

Hell, you don’t have to reach back as far as Vietnam to find monstrous atrocities committed by the United States. Hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, half a million dead Iraqi children under Clinton, tens of thousands dead across Latin America under Carter, Reagan and Bush I… and Obama himself, in a mere two and a half years, has already racked up a bigger body count than Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda have always been amateurs compared to the murderers employed by the United States government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-soviet-union-baddie

Alot of those “hippies” deserve to be told off. They aren’t going to win any elections on their own, heck they lost 2000 (indirectly) by spoiling Florida with Nader. Obama has never been a lefty candidate and neither was Pres. Clinton and if this was a parlamentary system, he’d probably have been the 2nd choice in a coalition gov’t for most of them. But until we get our fiscal house in order, we can’t afford to listen to social liberals anymore than we can afford to listen to the hawks who think we should beef up the military even more and bomb Iran.

But as far as civil liberties go, I think that’s a separate issue that depends on what the Administration and Congress want to do. The administration now has more room to maneuver after this without being painted as weak by the opposition. Before, they couldn’t even get a criminal trial for one of the terrorists, and Congress was going all NIMBY about where to put the prisoners so they are no longer in Cuba. “Only Nixon could go to China” and all that.

Walt @ 17: I’ve always been against the Iraq War, but the reason why Saddam made a good bogeyman was because he was a mass murdering bastard who had this nasty habit of invading the “nice” Arabian countries that are selling us oil. In contrast to the “good” dictators in Egypt &co. who we are still giving tons of money to.

There may be an element of 1984 to this, but if you look at it, I think there’s also some self interest involved in our choices of who to demonize (especially under Bush II). Iraq and Iran are both threats to oil security, to our allies in the Middle East (particularly Israel, although Saudi Arabia is also threatened) and their leadership is/was brutal to their own people. “Evildoer” Korea is a threat to both S. Korea and Japan, and they have the Bomb, which is more than enough to explain why we care at all whether they’re ruled by this incompetent space-alien who can’t even keep his own people fed.

Yeah, the nerve of those people, voting for the candidate of their choice.

#26 “AngryArab points out, says, rightly I think, the US probably wanted him alive so it could humiliate him as it had Saddam. Also, it’s quite possible Obama would have gotten more political mileage from a Bin Laden trial and execution.”

I think this is completely wrong. Just looking at what a nightmare the trial of KSM has become, I truly doubt Obama wanted UBL in a cage. This, in fact, is what makes me suspect that he was, essentially, executed. FWIW I felt no sense of celebration at his death; would have much preferred having him arrested and tried. I thought Obama could have shown himself a strong leader by going ahead with trial of KSM in NY. I wish we were the same kind of country that carried out the Nuremberg trials, at least in terms of commitment to rule of law, rejecting torture etc.

US anti-terrorism is not a response to terrorism; it is an expression of something endogenous to the USA. Stalin’s death did not end the Cold War, and even Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization was not enough. Maybe a few conservatives swing over to Obama’s side. Maybe the intelligence gathered at the compound makes a real difference. My general take, however, is that it’s going to take endogenous change in the USA–probably demographic change–to change US thinking on this.

In any event, I think this ends the Decade of the Big Nothing.

“If we cast [international law] aside, there’ll be nothing left but might-is-right, arms, oil and profits” – Jackie Ashley in the Guardian(UK)

The great force pulling American discourse to the right is corporate America, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow from it into the coffer of politicians of both parties, and the trillions of dollars that flow back to it in return

Different values of “to the right” here, I think. There isn’t much benefit to Goldman Sachs or Pfizer from US foreign policy discourse being on the ‘bloodthirsty maniac’ side of the tracks – if anything, it disadvantages US companies internationally. The Toby Keith Right is orthogonal to neoliberal corporatism – at most, it’s a sideshow to persuade working class people to vote for the party that’s most directly hostile to their interests.

Adam Curtis, talking about the power of “simple” stories, does come across as rather a simpleton himself.

No, you come across as someone who hasn’t read the article.

“The defense industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars off the war on terror; for that matter, so has the energy industry and, yes, the financial industry, running up fortunes in commodity speculation as the price of oil goes higher and higher”

The defence industry doesn’t require a War on Terror to make money (and indeed, a War on Terror is an inconvenient sort of war for the defence industry, since it relies primarily on intelligence rather than expensive toys). But I concede it benefits from proper shooting wars like Iraq.

Wars in one minor oil producing country and one non-oil producing country are pretty irrelevant to the oil price, which – until the end of 2010 – was driven by supply peaking while demand continued to rise. The current Arab Spring turmoil *has* had an additional impact, but you’d have to be in pretty deep tinfoil territory to assume that those uprisings are a creation of the US military-industrial-financial-energy complex.

“Wherever there’s been war, there’s been war profiteering – it’s the reason we have war in the first place.”

[citation needed]

Why would we want bin Laden Joseph Goebbels to have a trial? I honestly fail to understand this sentiment. This was a military action, in a foreign country, against the putative leader of an organization against which the US is at war. The man had no right to a presumption or effort at capture.

— Winston Churchill Andrew, 12/1944

The Republican narrative has been altered by several things recently, OBL killed (terrorism) Japan and BP (energy), the political ruckus in the Middle East. (multiple Boogeymen in possible demise)

Although the GOP sitting around twiddling their thumbs looking for something interesting to do doesn’t bring any sense of calm.

28: I think that tells us something about you, but not about the SEALs or their orders.

I am not in a hurry to declare these men and their commanders to be war criminals.

I think what these sentences tell us is that you are either heartrendingly naive or stupendously ignorant about the way in which the current undeclared war is being prosecuted.

Oh yeah, remember when Goebbels was tried in court?

Remember when the word “want” was included in the question? Or do you conspiracy-theorize that the trials at Nuremberg were an elaborate ruse to trick high-level Nazis into suicide?

Is nobody else bothered by the whole “Geronimo” thing? Either it establishes exactly the kind of continuity that you would not want (though I am sure that some think that is why it is exactly the right name…) or it points to the idea that in 100 years this whole OBL affair will be judged the same way the US attitudes to Geronimo are seen now, which one hopes it won’t be…

“@6, @7, @9, @11, @13: I’m not entirely without sympathy for your cynicism, but it loses a lot of its punch when one recalls that there were actually quite a lot of people who died because of OBL.”

yes. in Iraq, Afghanistan and the like. funny that.

d

Tariq Ali:

In 2006 on my way back from Lahore I encountered an acquaintance from my youth. Shamefacedly he confessed that he was a senior intelligence officer on his way to a European conference to discuss better ways of combating terrorism. The following conversation (a lengthier version can be found in The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power) ensued:

‘Is OBL still alive?’
He didn’t reply.
‘When you don’t reply,’ I said, ‘I’ll assume the answer is yes.’
I repeated the question. He didn’t reply.
‘Do you know where he is?’
He burst out laughing.
‘I don’t, and even if I did, do you think I’d tell you?’
‘No, but I thought I’d ask anyway. Does anyone else know where he is?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
I insisted: ‘Nothing in our wonderful country is ever a secret. Someone must know.’
‘Three people know. Possibly four. You can guess who they are.’
I could. ‘And Washington?’
‘They don’t want him alive.’
‘And your boys can’t kill him?’
‘Listen friend, why should we kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’

Now the Americans have killed the goose themselves. What was the bounty promised and to whom? Would that they also now brought to an end the war and occupation that was supposedly fought to take out Osama and that has already led to civilian casualties that are, at the very least, four times higher than the casualties of Twin Towers. Will they? Like hell they will.

“Eh, bin Laden is nothing; it’s al-Zawahiri we really should be afraid of. He’s twice as evil, and five times more powerful.”

In the time-travel back to kill Hitler scenario, yeah. If you had 2 bullets, you would have shot Zawahiri twice. Without him there was no al Qaeda, no pull with serious, established jihadist groups and what followed from that.

However in the present, the identities are meaningless. It’s been a philosophy more than a group/network for at least half a decade. The actual group itself has long since paled in comparison to other actors.

I predict that the death of bin Laden will lead to a gradual drawdown of the U.S. national security state apparatus that closely parallels the gradual drawdown of the U.S. national military-industrial apparatus following World War II.

@john b: “No, you come across as someone who hasn’t read the article.”

Hmm. Nothing here but a link. Then, in reply to my comment on the article and quote in the author’s voice, you give only your false insinuation.

Perhaps you disagree that Curtis is prey to the simplification he seems to me to simultaneously bemoan, celebrate and indulge in. Conversation would be easier if you’d provide evidence you had read the article. But you’ve convinced me you’re interested in something other than discussion.

It’s apparently a vindication of assassination as a means of foreign policy, and of military responses to terrorism in general.

ISTM that lumping together *conventional* military responses (which Bush tried and which failed) with intelligence/special ops responses (which succeeded) as “military responses” obscures more than it reveals. The involvement of Navy SEALs doesn’t really change the fact that this was primarily a CIA operation which relied for its success on surprising even our nominal ally, not an invasion and occupation of an entire country.

I don’t think anyone ever doubted that *some* form of violence would be the only effective way to respond to a fanatic like OBL. It’s not like he could be bought off or talked down. But there used to be a debate between small-scale, targeted, intelligence-heavy approaches and ham-fisted invasions of whole countries, and in that framework, it’s clear that the scalpel approach was the one that was vindicated. I doubt if anyone will try to mock “law enforcement” as a response to terrorism anymore.

#66 “I predict that the death of bin Laden will lead to a gradual drawdown of the U.S. national security state apparatus that closely parallels the gradual drawdown of the U.S. national military-industrial apparatus following World War II.”

Martial Plan?

While no one should be mourning Osama bin Laden’s death, the story has turned out to be more dodgy than it first appeared. Looks like the raid didn’t happen as the White House first said it did. There was no human shield. He could have been unarmed, captured alive and then killed. If so, this is more similar to a death squad than to law enforcement.

Does anyone know what happen to the bodies of the other people that were killed? If Islamic tradition made it important to dispose of bin Laden’s body so quickly, you would think that they already have been handed over to their families for burial. And what about the people who survived, including his wife and children? Eventually, their version of what happened will get out too.

someone who we bought off as an ally for what, about a decade?, and who turned against us not too long after we stopped buying him off

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that he played us for fools for about a decade and stopped considering us useful sources of supplies after we stopped being useful to him?

If so, this is more similar to a death squad than to law enforcement.

But those two things are still more similar to each other than to a full-scale invasion. (Especially in this case, where the outcome of a trial would be foreordained anyway.) Conventional military force has failed, hard, and is no longer credible as a response to terrorism. ISTM (given the two wars we still aren’t out of) that this is a bigger deal than how much due process to afford a confessed terrorist.

chris: Conventional military force has failed, hard, and is no longer credible as a response to terrorism … (given the two wars we still aren’t out of)

I guess it still needs to be said: the invasion of Iraq was not a response to terrorism. No one in the US government believed that Saddam had anything to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11. That was simply one of several cover stories. The US invaded because Saddam was an unstable ally, controlling the second- or third-largest reserve of the world’s most valuable resource. Moreover, the national security apparatus must have known — they may be utterly dishonest, but they’re not stupid, or at least that stupid — that invading a mostly Muslim country and building several mega-bases there would probably elicit more terrorism.

Donald Rumsfeld said: “The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with oil! Literally nothing!” Is any more proof needed?

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that he played us for fools for about a decade and stopped considering us useful sources of supplies after we stopped being useful to him?

Yes, but it would also be less facetious, and right now what the world needs is a whole lot more people laughing-sneering-jeering at the very idea that we should be continually investing resources desperately needed elsewhere in the most incoherent military response to a coherent law enforcement problem the world has ever seen.

Do we really need a trial, complete with grand-standing by OBL with backing civil rights violin played by Geoffrey Robertson, to prove this guy was guilty?

Riiiight, come to think of it, I don’t know why we tried O.J. either — hell, that guy couldn’t even have used his wife as a human shield!

bin Laden was already dead.

No the point is not that he died from renal failure years ago to be buried secretly by his supporters. Rather he had already become a pure image, for some of evil for others not. The actual or physical bin Laden became of much less importance than the image of him.

The recent US raid then, in which bin Laden was killed plays (or prays) upon Osama as image. One kills the image with a even more perfected, over-the-top image. Commandos rappelling onto a suburban mansion, a spirited firefight, even a feminine touch with the report of a human shield. Then the body hoisted away and eventually dumped with religious dignity into the sea.

What really happened is wholly irrelevant.

The image of bin Laden and now the new image or model of his death is what matters for politicians, reporters, and for the celebrants in Lafayette park.

Some years ago the USA contracted with Hollywood screenwriters to come up with the most twisted scenarios they could imagine The recent killing has the same hallmarks. Imagine this: a new call from the US to screenwriters to imagine how bin Laden would be found. In a cave. No, too boring. How about a suburban mansion. Living an almost idyllic family life. Then a sudden raid by professionals. A touch of romance when the wife throws herself between them or was used as a human shield (either image brings in the necessary element). A body snatched. Then a CSI exam followed by burial at sea (expect those images any minute now).

Like a Hitchcock horror movie that is not too graphic, our imaginations fill in any gaps in this scenario (and gaps there are for the story is already changing; Osama was armed now it is said he was not0.

What’s next? I would not be surprised to see a counter-image arise soon. If not bin Laden himself then a lookalike will soon release a new threatening video or photo with audio message. Stay tuned.

Meet the new super bad guys — same as the old super bad guys.

Rick Santorum, doubtless rehearsing some lines for tonight

But whatever the fate of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the A-Team of terrorism is still Hezbollah — and it is as strong as ever..

Before or after kidnapping him?

He was a wanted suspect, so I don’t think taking him into custody is ‘kidnapping’ him. Capture by the military seems okay to support in this case, as we were granted authorization by the Pakistanis to do so (unless I’m misunderstanding the deal McChrystal brokered). Presumably getting authorization for rendition wouldn’t be hard.

Which part of the rule of law applies?

The ICC part, if not U.S. law.

I don’t see how strict adherence to the rule of law would wind up with US custody of bin Laden in the first place.

Indeed it might not, though I think Pakistan already granted extradition and ‘hot pursuit’ rights that would allow for U.S. custody.

Bad sentence, but I think you know what I mean.

@Chris – you’re totally right but I was more talking hypothetically. There were some on the left (in the media as well as people I know personally) who said that he didn’t “deserve a trial” in the event that a fair one would have been available.

My point was that it’s not about “desert” because not only is a fair trial a human right as established by the UDHR among others, but because the positive effects of bending an extremely important law (i.e. a faster trial for a man who would be found guilty anyways) would be insignificant to nonexistent versus the clear and large negative effects.