Mission impossible

The killing of Osama bin Laden settles nothing, decides nothing, and repairs nothing. Yet the passing of the al-Qa’eda leader just might serve an important purpose. We confront a moment of revelation: coming across bin Laden comfortably ensconced in a purpose-built compound in the middle of major Pakistani city down the street from the nation’s premier military academy should demolish once and for all any lingering illusions that Americans retain about their so-called global war on terror. The needle, it turns out, was not in the haystack but tucked safely away in our neighbour’s purse — the very same neighbour who professed to be searching high and low to locate that very same needle. Think we’ve been had?

Bin Laden was an indubitably evil figure. Yet the historical drama in which he played a role of considerable importance is not a morality play. Its central theme is not good vs evil. It is instead the pursuit of power and advantage by whatever means are necessary. In short, the theme is politics — dirty, cutthroat, and no holds barred.

In the immediate wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush and more than a few other Americans insisted otherwise. The issue at hand, they asserted, could hardly have been clearer: it was freedom vs oppression; civilisation vs barbarism; tolerance vs bigotry; the law abiding vs the law defiling.

As in the early days of the Cold War, Washington divided the world into two neatly defined opposing camps. ‘You are either with us,’ Bush declared ten days after 9/11, ‘or you are with the terrorists.’