By H. N. Burdett
Mark these words. Indeed, it may already have happened, though thus far unreported: ideologue wags will rush to be the first to slam President Obama for procrastinating for nine months before giving the order to storm the Abbottabad compound and kill Osama Bin Laden.
The euphoria of patriotic fervor sweeping the United States from sea to shining sea in celebration of the death of Bin Laden at the hands of a special forces team on the 66th anniversary of the suicide of Adolf Hitler will not have quelled before the derision of the president, who had known of the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts since last August, begins.
There will doubtless be about as much sympathy for capital punishment advocacy over the demise of Bin Laden as there was for Iraq's leader, Sadam Hussein. No contract on the life of anyone has ever been more in order than it was on the man who perpetrated the horrific events of 9/11 ending the slaughter of some 3,000 Americans.
Osama Bin Laden is gone, but there is an enormous question mark over the proposition of whether or not the world is a safer place than it was before this celebratory event.
The news of Bin Laden's death can come as little comfort to Moumar Qadaffi and other tyrants in country after country in the Middle East where people have taken to the streets demanding change that hopefully translates as a long overdue outcry for democratic government.
At very least, it is a safe wager that there will now emerge a clamoring for replications of the special forces operation that has rid the planet of a homicidal maniac to take down a few others. Call it human nature, but the thirst for the blood of other madmen is destined to go viral.
When the killing of Bin Laden was announced, many of us had many different thoughts, reflecting appropriate retribution or cold vengeance.
The daughter of a man whose life ended in the World Trade Center attack had it right when she was interviewed by a television network reporter about her feelings after learning of Bin Laden's death. She said, in effect, that it would not bring her father back, that she personally felt the same as she did before she heard the news and that she expected to feel the day after: the only difference is that Bin Laden is no more, and her life goes on. She had it exactly right.
My own thoughts centered on Andrew Bacevich, the former army colonel who had once been characterized as a Pentagon intellectual and now heads the international relations program at Boston Univeristy.
Bacevich repeatedly criticized United States intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan as unnecessary, without denigrating the loss of lives of American soldiers who fought in these wars. One of the lives lost was his own son.
Bacevich is convinced that there cannot be a war against terrorism because wars, by definition, are hostilities between nations, not against "isms." He believes the hunt for Bin Laden and the effort to obliterate al-Qaeda should, from the beginning, have been an international police operation. This might well have held together the so-called "coalition of the willing" and Bin Laden may have been killed or captured long earlier than he was.
Announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden from the White House, President Obama said: "Justice has been done."
The woman interviewed by network TV had it right. President Obama had it right. And, in my mind, Andrew Bacevich had it right. But back to the more relevant question: Is the world today a safer place? The question looms large and it is one that only time can answer.
