It’s too late now, but the Obama administration made several major mistakes by killing Osama Bin Laden worth reflecting on. Most people are glad Bin Laden is dead, but we had much more to gain if we extracted him and sent him to solitary confinement where he would rot to the end of his days.
The most important reason for keeping him alive should be fairly obvious. Osama was one of the highest value targets in the war on terror. And what are high value targets good for? Information. Aside from scouring his hard drives, whatever information Bin Laden might have had was lost when he was killed. Sure, knowing the Obama administration’s views on interrogation, you might have to wait for the next president in 2013 to take a crack at him, but still. Keeping him alive could have provided us with critical information that could have saved lives and prevented untold tragedy.
The second reason for keeping him alive was the message it would send. Killing Bin Laden played right into his hands. His whole movement is based on the idea of martyrdom. Killing Osama fed right into their mythology that being killed made you a hero in heaven. He went from being an old man on the run to someone who fought to the end and thus went into Islamo-fascist legend. But if we had captured and extracted him, he would have withered away in some US supermax facility for the rest of his days, where he’d be forced to live with what he had done. Killing him spared him of that. Moreover, keeping him alive would have made the islamists feel impotent, because we captured their leader and were holding him beyond their reach. By killing him they now claim he is still alive. This argument is strengthened by the administration’s decision to drop the body where it could not be found, before independent analysts could have confirmed it was OBL. They compounded the problem by refusing to release the photos of his body. Once again the “most transparent” administration in history denied the public information many people seek. The public paid for this operation but all we got was the word of a president with credibility issues.
You’d think the trillions of dollars spent over 10 years would have provided us with some JPGs for our trouble.
Capturing OBL would have eliminated that issue. There would be the matter of a fair trial. But since he’s an enemy combatant, military tribunals, which the administration is beginning to see the light on, would cover it and prevent a legal circus. Keeping him in solitary would prevent him from becoming another Mumia Abu-Jamal. A trial against Osama would probably take years to put together, so by the time he would go to court, there would probably be another president. They could just stash him away and prevent him from sending out messages or writing any books before, during and afterward.
The trial and imprisonment would cost the US a lot of money, but keeping him alive would have paid for itself in many other ways.
There could have been repercussions, too, such as terrorists could hold American’s hostage in exchange for his release. But the fact is terrorists are going to do something no matter what we do. They are already claiming they have big revenge plans now. We’ll see if they can deliver. But nothing we would have done would have avoided upsetting the fanatics in the Islamic world. This administration’s move to dispose of the body before anyone else could see it, then refuse to release photos is fodder for the conspiracy theorists and al Qaeda who have a vested interest in keeping him alive in myth.
The administration wasted a tremendous opportunity to make us look more just by holding Osama for trial instead of putting out a hit on him. It may have satisfied many, but they would have gotten a lot more mileage out of keeping him alive. And it would have gone a lot farther in making us look like the good guys, by practicing rule of law instead of executing an enemy.
It may have brought with it its own complications and issues, but in the end, it might have been a much wiser course.