The big story was that they got him, not that he was stopped. Osama bin Laden was already stopped. Sure,
the al-Qaida movement could still massacre Christians at a Baghdad
church and try to put package bombs on cargo planes headed for the
United States. But bin Laden's plan for a restored Islamic super-state
enforcing a puritanical Islam had sunk into irrelevance for the very
people the terrorist sought to inspire. We killed him. They stopped him. Bin
Laden was last century's news in an Arab world whose young people were
concluding that modern democracy, rather than a medieval caliphate
enforcing puritanical Islam, would address their anger and frustration.
Women joined demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. Some
were seized, killed and raped -- but the women were not going to be the
silent shadows of the bin Laden vision. While visiting the State
Department on Monday, I asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton how
the death of bin Laden might change the dynamics of the Arab Spring
uprising. She said that foreign policy experts are trying to figure
that out by closely monitoring what was happening on the Internet. The
young Arabs who were coordinating their protests via Twitter, Facebook
and other social media were now sharing their responses to bin Laden's
death. Foreign policy experts, Clinton said, were analyzing the
comments for patterns, trying to put the pieces together. Clinton
said American diplomacy, meanwhile, would try to put the killing of bin
Laden in a proper frame -- "to shape its meaning and create a narrative
to convince people that he was not a martyr. He was a murderer." Martyr
or murderer, bin Laden already did not seem to matter much. Support for
the terrorist had already crashed in the Muslim world, according to a
Pew Research Center survey. Asked whether they had confidence in bin
Laden to do the right thing in world affairs, only 1 percent of Muslims
in Lebanon said yes, down from 19 percent in 2003. In Jordan, the
percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in bin Laden had collapsed
from 56 percent in 2003 to 13 percent now. Bin Laden's highest
confidence rating, 34 percent, is found in the Palestinian territories,
but even that number is down sharply from 72 percent in 2003. What
happened? Well, in 2005, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for blowing up
52 people in hotels in Amman, Jordan's, capital. Two years later, the
group boasted of bomb attacks in the Algerian capital of Algiers,
killing 33 innocents. Months later, its bombs massacred 41 at the U.N.
offices in Algiers. Last year, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for
bombing hotels in Baghdad, killing 36, then in October, storming into a
Sunday mass in one of the city's churches and massacring 52. Last
month, terrorists believed to be al-Qaida operatives set off a bomb in
Marrakesh, Morocco, killing 15 people, 10 of them foreigners. Could
there be any greater difference in tactics than between the brave
nonviolence of young Arab demonstrators facing off against armed
totalitarians and the cowardly violence of al-Qaida against bystanders? Could
there be any wider gulf in aspiration than between the pro-democracy
youth wanting votes and jobs and the al-Qaida dictators seeking to
enforce an all-controlling brand of religion and to shut away half the
population, women? To Americans who suffered directly or indirectly
from the outrages of Sept. 11, 2001 -- nearly all of us -- the killing
of bin Laden brought a sense of justice. But from a geopolitical
standpoint, did it matter all that much what cave or mansion or closet
he was hiding in? Frankly, his fall to insignificance was the sweetest revenge. To
find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL CO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
