Special op in Abbottabad

When I fired up my email this morning, the first one I opened was from a friend in the UK. Like me, he’s been job-hunting and finding much of the same idiocy and ignorance I’ve encountered. So when I read the subject, “The Big News”, I thought he’d had a job offer.

But it was about Osama Bin Laden’s death.

It’s appropriate that I should get the news from Don—he was the first of my Euro colleagues to reach out to me with condolence and support when the planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. He’s also made a point of touching base with me every year on 11 September.

I was in the UK then, and had been notified only a few days before that my ex-pat contract was being terminated (and returning to the US meant I’d certainly be laid off). I watched the coverage of the planes hitting the towers again and again, on a wall of TVs at work. I held it together until, driving home on the M4, I passed the GlaxoSmithKline headquarters building, which had lowered its flags. Then the tears wouldn’t stop.

Like a lot of people, I’m reliving that time, now that US forces raided Bin Laden’s million-dollar compound in Abbottabad, a mountain town north of Islamabad—a town that has effectively been put on the world map with this action. We’ll be a while piecing together the details of what happened, much less what it means. So only a few initial thoughts; don’t expect profundity.

I wouldn’t characterize a special operation like this as “justice”; but I’m glad that Bin Laden didn’t die in bed of old age. I’m not sure, though, whether at this point he’s not more valuable to Islamist fanatics dead than alive. There’s some thought that he’d become irrelevant; but now, of course, he’s a martyr. It’s certainly not going to have much of an effect on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda and the other terrorist organizations are rather like the Hydra—cut off one head and two grow up in its place. Heracles had to cauterize the stump of each head as he lopped it off in order to kill the beast. I think that, at the most, we’ve cut off one of the heads. I don’t know what’s going to cauterize the necks, but until we do know, we’re in for the long haul.

There will be reprisals for Bin Laden’s death; at the very least, actions that have long been planned will be dedicated to him.

Bin Laden had been living in a somewhat ostentatious walled property within spitting distance of a Pakistani military academy. If anyone thinks the Pakistani government wasn’t aware of who was behind those 18ft barbed-wire-topped walls, burning their trash instead of having it collected and eschewing phone and Internet connections, then I’d advise having their medications adjusted. I understand that world politics makes strange allies, but Pakistan’s leaders bring corruption, political murder and duplicity to a high art. They make Turkey look positively above-board and true-blue.

Our government has acknowledged that we didn’t notify the Pakistanis of the raid until all our aircraft and people were out of their air space, because in the past when they have been informed of raids, the targets disappeared in advance. That really ought to make the administration at least revisit our ties to that country. Yes, we have precious few friends in that part of the world; but I think it’s clear that, by any definition of the term, Pakistan isn’t really an ally.

Much to the chagrin of news outlets, there were no correspondents embedded with the special ops team. However, a resident of Abbottabad live-tweeted about what he saw and heard. Sohaib Athar merged the age-old piece-of-the-picture you get from anyone who stumbles onto a Big Event without knowing what it is with Web 2.0 social networking. He is now discovering what it is to be a media darling—I’m betting his mobile phone is about to hit melt-down and his ISP is probably crashing with all the emails from global news purveyors wanting to interview him.

Speaking of broadcast media—I’m wondering how long it’ll take the producers of NCIS to air an episode in which the team provides vital support to the Navy SEALS during the raid.

I don’t know whether taking out Bin Laden will ameliorate any of the pain I feel when I think of 11 September. My friend Don was going to take a walk and then lift a glass in honor of all those who have lost in this war against terror. I think he has the right idea.