The killing of OBL: from enhanced interrogations to presidential speech writing
and quite a few offered details in memoirs they published after retiring from service – that the invasion and occupation of Iraq drained massive amounts of resources – financial, man-power, intelligence, attention – from the war against terrorism.
The five years of preoccupation with Iraq – 2003-2008 – allowed al Qaeda to reconstitute itself in the tribal areas of Pakistan and turn the area into a safe haven, and also to foster the emergence of sister organizations and movements in a vast swath stretching from the Philippines and Indonesia all the way west to Niger, Mali, and Mauritania.
The capture of OBL during the mid-point of the Obama administration is not an accident or the result of sheer luck. It is the result of focus and allocation of resources. As we have written in several stories over the past two years, the administration has increased dramatically the U.S. military and intelligence focus on Pakistan. This increased attention finds many expressions: the sharp rise in UAV intelligence gathering and attack activities over Pakistan; the insertion of U.S. Special Forces into Pakistan (with or without the knowledge and permission of the Pakistani government); the bolstering of the CIA presence in the country (so much so, that a month ago Pakistan demanded that the United States take a few dozen CIA agent out of the country), and more.
OBL was killed two days ago because of the exponential increase in attention, resources, and manpower dedicated to the mission of capturing or killing him. What would have happened if these resources were available for this mission earlier?
Advice to policymakers: Follow Bill Clinton’s admonition to “Focus like a laser beam”: Prioritize, and do not take your eyes off the ball.
3. Proof positive
The compound in which OBL was hiding could have been destroyed from the air. The United States sent soldiers in to kill him because there was a need for proof positive – DNA, biometrics, pictures – that he was killed.
There will always be conspiracy theorists who will claim that the whole thing was staged, and that OBL is, in fact, still alive and in hiding. Few things are more stubborn than conspiracy theories, and few people are more stubborn than those who hold to these beliefs (just see the loony “Birthers” who question Obama’s Hawaii birth), but most people are not conspiracy theorists, and it is important to prove to the world that OBL is gone.
The United States needed to prove it was on the offensive once more. We would all be better off if leaders of terrorist organizations spent their time looking over their shoulder and spent their resources trying to protect themselves, until they are caught or killed.
Another piece of advice to policymakers: Pay attention to the kind of war you are in. The war against terrorism is not a war over territory and assets. It is a war over symbols, psychology, perception, and public opinion. Killing bin Laden from the air by bombing his compound and collapsing it on top of him would have achieved the same physical result – OBL’s death — but it would not have achieved the same psychological and perceptual result.
4. Lessons
On Monday morning, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the killing of bin Laden was ‘a lesson to the whole world.” Indeed.
On 26 December 1941, Winston Churchill addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. It was two and half weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United Kingdom had been at war with Germany for more than two years. Churchill concluded his speech with a question about the leaders of Germany and Japan, and their apparent misperception of the character of the American and British people: “What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”
It would not have been a bad idea for President Obama, on the occasion of announcing the killing of bin Laden, to ask this question about terrorists and their leaders.
Advice to presidential speech writers: Leadership consists of two elements – prose and poetry. On a historic occasion of this kind, more poetry in the president’s otherwise fine speech would have been appropriate.
Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire
