More thoughts on OBL killing...

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 
The WAPO sez: OBL unarmed when shot



Some questions: 
Why was an unarmed man shot? Was that the plan from the beginning, or did people get carried away? Were other people shooting at US soldiers and they felt they had to kill bin Laden while they had the chance? Was there a chance of him getting away? Was the US government at all interested in capturing bin Laden alive? If not, then why not? Wouldn't there have been some use, intelligence-wise, to capturing him alive? 
Was bin Laden really killed "after" a firefight, and not during one? 
* * *
There's an article I really like by Thomas M. Barrett called "The Remaking of the Lion of Dagestan: Shamil in Captivity" (Russian Review 53, 3 (1994): 353-66) which discusses the gilded captivity of Shamil, leader of a twenty-five year fight against Russian troops. Shamil was captured in 1859 but wasn't executed, despite having for decades been Enemy Number One to Russian military officials in the northern Caucasus.  Instead, Shamil was exiled to St. Petersburg and Kiev, and in his old age was permitted to travel to take the pilgrimage to Mecca. 
I guess at least some imperial practices have ended. 

Imam Shamil: from badass of the northern Caucasus to the Henry Hill of nineteenth century Russia.
* * *
I have no expertise in the area, but I wonder to what extent killing Osama bin Laden is actually in our interests. Ever since September 11, bin Laden was, I presume, to a large extent concerned with staying alive. He wasn't using a cellphone, or staying in a single house for very long. He was thought to have had kidney problems. What energy could he have had for planning any actions, let alone train people to carry them out?
But presumably bin Laden had made contingency plans. There are now probably other people, individuals we might know less about, who will be in charge of bin Laden's resources and who will be able to better focus on carrying out actions against us. For every reason other than psychological ones, isn't it possible that an ill and hidden bin Laden would have been a preferable, from an American perspective, center of organized anti-American terrorism than a lieutenant equipped with the same resources but with more energy and mobility and less baggage? 
Just a thought. I don't mean to argue that they shouldn't have gone after him once they knew where he was, but I do wonder if capturing/killing Osama bin Laden was really the best way to spend resources dedicated to preventing terrorism or breaking up terrorist networks.
* * * 
Back to Obama's speech for a second. Here is another part that left me thinking: 


I don't mean to sound insensitive, but are we ever going to get over re-living September 11? Do we always have to talk about the bright blue sky, the crashing down of the towers, the smells and the ash? I know Obama likes to conjure up evocative images, but is this really necessary? Do we need the empty seat at the dinner table to remind us of the gravity of September 11? Do we really need to sing "God Bless America" at every baseball game we play between now and the end of time? 

Maybe we do, if we only see September 11 in terms of what we lost, rather than in terms of the mistakes we made in responding to the attacks.

It's one thing to grieve, but part of the grieving process must be closure, right? What must people think in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of our war, and where millions more had their lives totally upended as a result of events they had absolutely nothing to do with? What must they think of our inability to get past this, our tendency to view September 11 only in terms of our own suffering and victimization? Look at the pictures of the crowds who were out on Sunday night. For them, I think it must seem like September 11 happened yesterday, as if nothing has happened since then.

Maybe September 11 was just the last time those people paid close attention to the news.

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