Echoes of Gunfire: bin Laden the US and the Greater Middle East

摘要

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of US Navy SEALs on 1 May 2011 was so long in coming - almost ten years after the 11 September attacks - that it was felt more as a relief than as a triumph. Despite the cheers and celebrations that erupted across the United States, the essential reaction was 'it's about time'. Because bin Laden had for years been viewed as a besieged and operationally hobbled figurehead, his demise seemed little more that welcome retribution for the blood he had shed, and a pleasant surprise to those who had just about stopped begrudging him his proverbial (and fictitious) cave. His death appeared to merely confirm, rather than precipitate, al-Qaeda's political and strategic marginalisation. Consequently, its larger transformative potential may have seemed dubious. In fact, that potential is substantial, not because bin Laden had remained a vital operational cog in the jihadist machinery, but because most Americans and many others regard his death as President Barack Obama's finest strategic moment. As Dominique Moisi wrote in Le Figaro, 'it is as though there were a little more Obama in the United States, and a little more United States in the world'.1