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02/05/2011 | Bin Laden's Death: Beginning of the End of the War on Terror

Michael Cohen

While the death of Osama bin Laden represents the long overdue demise of one man, its impact on the long-term trajectory of American foreign policy is likely to be more profound: Along with bin Laden, so too dies the "global war on terrorism." This does not mean that there are no longer any terrorists who want to kill Americans and other Westerners.

 

Neither does it mean that al-Qaida will simply disappear overnight. And another major attack could return the U.S. and its allies to a war footing.

But bin Laden's death does mean that the exaggerated role that terrorism has played in America's foreign policy discussions for the past 10 years can finally come to an end. Osama bin Laden, for better or worse, was the face of the terrorist threat to America. As long as he was at large, not only would the war on terrorism remain seemingly unfinished in the eyes of the American people, but the threat would remain viscerally real -- even though from all accounts his operational role in al-Qaida had diminished. With his death, the terrorism narrative that has held this country in its thrall for 10 terrible years has taken a rather significant and perhaps fatal hit.

Looking back, the nature of the threat from al-Qaida and terrorism in general has been dramatically overstated in the United States for years. It was presented to the American people as an existential threat to the country and its freedoms, and used to justify the disastrous war in Iraq. It led to an extraordinary increase in America's intelligence, military and homeland security budgets, and spurred the perpetration of illegal actions -- including torture -- against enemies, often real but sometimes mistaken. Indeed, the list of exaggerated responses to the attacks of Sept. 11, both inside and outside of government, is mind-bogglingly long. With the ill-advised escalation into Afghanistan to deal with this supposed threat in 2009-2010, the country's outsized focus and obsession on terrorism seemed to have no end in sight.

These actions were a nightmarishly exaggerated response to one terrible terrorist attack. In retrospect, it is hard to believe that the U.S. allowed itself to become so possessed by the fear of future ones. Looking back, we know that the threat from al-Qaida was simply not commensurate with the U.S. response. But because of the politicized reaction to Sept. 11, and because terrorism was described as an existential threat by America's elected leaders, it was not possible to have a more mature conversation about terrorism and its actual threat to U.S. national security. Terrorism remained the overweening construct by which America approached both the world and the risks inherent to any engagement with it. That has remained the case for 10 years, even though the U.S. mainland has been targeted by only the most amateurish of plots since Sept. 11, and even though the threat from al-Qaida has diminished since then.

The death of bin Laden provides an opportunity to rewrite this narrative and finally recalibrate America's response to terrorism. It provides President Barack Obama with the opportunity to talk about the threat from terror networks in a proper national security context. It will likely diminish the effectiveness of political demagoguery on the issue. Perhaps most important, it gives the president far more political flexibility to wind down the war in Afghanistan, shift the U.S. relationship with Pakistan and end the toxic civil liberties practices associated with the war on terrorism. It remains to be seen whether Obama will take advantage of his political opportunity to do so. But in the near term, one might imagine that bin Laden's death could have a direct impact on the level of U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this summer.

None of this is to suggest that terrorism has suddenly come to an end. But bin Laden's death makes it possible to birth a new politics in which terrorism no longer holds America so deeply in its grip. It represents an opportunity to make a reality the words spoken by counterterrorism chief John Brennan in the summer of 2009 when discussing al-Qaida and the war on terror:

The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining -- indeed, distorting -- our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies. President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not be defined simply by what we are against, but by what we are for -- the opportunity, liberties, prosperity and common aspirations we share with the world.

Since that speech, the United States has made precious little progress in achieving these goals. Indeed, Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan directly undermined this effort. But now, with bin Laden dead, a unique opportunity exists to move away from the national obsession with terrorism -- not to ignore it, but to make it just one of many issues that policymakers must deal with in safeguarding the nation's security.

For 10 long years the American people allowed the deaths of 3,000 of their fellow citizens -- and the possibility of additional deaths -- to justify squandering blood, treasure and policymaking attention on a breathtaking scale. Sunday night, the life of a nihilistic, pyschopathic and deranged terrorist came to an end. That his death might signal the beginning of the end of our own national bloodletting makes the news all the better.

**Michael Cohen is a senior fellow at the American Security Project and blogs at Democracy Arsenal.

World Politics Review (Estados Unidos)

 


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