End of Osamaism /Patrick Michael*

He chucked away his $250m
inheritance to take on
the communists in Afghanistan
and then the US? But the
million dollar question now is:
What after Osama bin Laden?

It could be regarded as an irony in the political theatre of war and peace. The man who won the Nobel Prize for Peace ordered a killing. And the man taken had a reward of $25 million on his head.

For the world that still believes in fairy tales, it was classic good versus evil, the triumph of the superhero over the super-evil. Politics, even war, is never as simple as that. One man’s hero is another man’s villain. One man’s target is another man’s martyr.

But perhaps the biggest take-away from the death of Osama bin Laden is a not-so-subtle reminder from US President Barack Obama that patience pays.

And perhaps the biggest miss for the world media was to pass by a rather innocuous story on the very day that Obama sought to silence the ‘birther’ conspirators that he is a legit American by publicising his birth certificate.

Among the hundreds of other stories that were shunted to the inner pages was a news story that Obama plans a reshuffle that would place General David Petraeus, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) as the head of CIA.

So while the world at large was watching the comedy of Donald Trump, aspiring to be president, and Obama in retreat mode, the US President, apparently, was firming up the last salvo. And that was a real trump, a masterstroke that could elevate his ratings to record highs.

Now, with news of Bin Laden’s death, it seemed only logical to assume that Obama and Gen. Petraeus knew that the final offensive was near; like his arguable triumph in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus will not return to the US empty-handed. Although executed under a different jurisdiction than Afghanistan, the killing of Bin Laden is as much as success for Gen. Petraeus as for Obama.

In his remarks to officially announce the death of Bin Laden, Osama singles out the CIA for its unrelenting offensive on Al Qaeda. He said: “I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of Bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.”

Conspirator theorists and some of the world’s most researched scholars, including Adam Curtis, the man who made the brilliant documentary The Power of Nightmares, will argue that the Al Qaeda threat was hugely inflated and that Bin Laden himself had come to know of Sept 11 only on the very day.

But the death of the man who is attributed with some of the world’s most shocking atrocities will come as a relief to a large section of the world. And it will be a crowning glory for Obama, who was increasingly under pressure both at home and abroad for being an orator rather than a doer.

On hindsight, and as analysts huddle together to discuss the world as it is now, a clear trend emerges. There is a calculative side to Obama, which perhaps is imperative for world politics.

Imagine this: A few hours before he addresses the world in his sombre style that ‘the death of Bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda”, he was fending off Donald Trump, demolishing the business tycoon, reducing him to a caricature, making the man who relishes “to fire”, be pot-roasted in full media glare. Did Obama even give away an inkling that he had a bigger ace up his sleeve? He knew that revenge is best served cold, and with the success of his forces in Pakistan in killing Osama, the foreign policy approach of the US President seems to be more in focus than ever before.

That the ‘anti-war’ president had committed troops to Afghanistan was in fact a letdown for legions of his followers around the world. It was as if the presidential victory of Obama was just another ceremonial handover of crown than a policy shift.

News that US troops were “willing” to stay put in Iraq even after the deadline for withdrawal was another uncomforting sign that America was more interested in war mongering than peace.

For a man who called on the Arab world to embrace democracy at his famous Cairo speech that endeared him to Egyptians, his apparent reluctance to outrightly endorse the Arab Spring that blossomed in Tahrir Square equally befuddled his fans.

After all, could it be faulted to say that Obama, perhaps, had seeded the idea of an Arab Spring through his speech described as the “most powerful in history”.

Recall his words: “I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.”

But why did he appear to be dithering, when practically the rest of the world wanted the US to intervene in Libya? Today, as even Gulf commentators ask NATO forces to restrain from killing Col Muammar Gaddafi, it appears that slow-tracking on the Libyan offensive by Obama made sense — at least to America.

When history will convene on the atrocities that Libya as a nation suffered, the judgment will be skewed with venom on Nicholas ‘France’ Sarkozy and David ‘Britain’ Cameron but Barack ‘US’ Obama will largely be spared the ire.

As the New Yorker story of this week, ‘The Consequentialist’ notes, “Just a year before coming to Washington, State Senator Obama was not immersed in the dangers of nuclear Pakistan or an ascendant China; as a provincial legislator, he was investigating the dangers of a toy known as the Yo-Yo Water Ball. (He tried, unsuccessfully, to have it banned.)”

Today, he swings the yo-yo with the world; one swing, a swipe at fundamentalism; the other a take on his detractors at home.

The man has learnt his turf. But the question remains: Osama is now no more, but is this the end of Osamaism?

If we indeed believe that Al Qaeda was practically a small motley crew of die-hard fundamentalists and not the multi-tentacled monster as we know it, will Osama’s death serve as a rallying force for the do-or-die followers who believe in a cause espoused by the man who chucked away his inheritance of $250 million to fight the communists in Afghanistan? Obama might be working on this already.

Communism created the legacy of Osama; the capitalistic America, a wee left leaning under Obama, killed him.

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*Patrick Michael is the Executive Editor of Khaleej Times