News Analysis: In Bin Laden?s Death, a Critical Moment for the Arab World
In the early days of the Arab Spring, President Obama frequently told his aides that the movement sweeping from Cairo to Yemen ? one place where Al Qaeda found its intellectual roots, the other where it has taken refuge ? created what he called an ?alternative narrative? for a disaffected generation.
There were no pictures of Osama bin Laden being paraded through the streets, he noted. Nor were there chants of ?Death to America.? The question now is whether Bin Laden?s death at the hands of American Special Forces and the C.I.A. spurs the movement to promote democracy in the region or ? a very real alternative ? fuels the Islamist forces now trying to fill the new power vacuum in the Arab world.
The White House, not surprisingly, argued late Sunday evening that the killing of Bin Laden came at just the crucial moment, when the Arab world was turning its back on Al Qaeda?s ideology.
?It?s important to note that it is most fitting that Bin Laden?s death comes at a time of great movement towards freedom and democracy that is sweeping the Arab world,? one of Mr. Obama?s national security aides told reporters in a telephone call late Sunday night, after the spectacular raid on Bin Laden?s high-walled compound was over. ?He stood in direct opposition to what the greatest men and women throughout the Middle East and North Africa are risking their lives for: individual rights and human dignity.?
If the Obama White House proves right in its interpretation of events, the death of Al Qaeda?s leader will represent far more than simply bringing to justice the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It would underscore the argument that Al Qaeda?s pathway to change in the Middle East ? through violence ? never unseated a single dictator and never brought real change. For that reason, Al Qaeda?s appeal was already fading before Bin Laden met his end.
It could also mark the beginning of a new era in which the global war on terror, as the Bush administration called it, no longer remains the raison d?être of American foreign policy, as it has been since the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. For years, America?s relationships with the world were measured almost entirely by Washington?s judgment about whether countries were helping or impeding that war. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to change that, even while pursuing a counterterrorism strategy ? and the hunt for Bin Laden ? relentlessly.
But until now, Mr. Obama?s hopes of steering America in a radically different direction amounted to more aspiration than plan. He has tried to refocus American attention toward Asia, where the country?s economic future lies, and pursue a striking agenda to vastly reduce the role of nuclear weapons around the world. But those efforts were always subsumed by the leftover issues of the ?legacy wars? of Afghanistan and Iraq: the 30,000-troop ?surge? in Afghanistan to keep the country from becoming a Qaeda haven again; the failed effort to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the plunge in the testy relationship with a nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The Arab Spring added a confusing new element, as Washington sought to guide events that promised a new relationship with a region that was casting off its dictators and, perhaps, on the cusp of embracing some form of democracy. But as the more candid of Mr. Obama?s aides acknowledged, it is a movement that, at its core, is out of Washington?s control.
Now, the elimination of the central symbol of Al Qaeda offers a new opportunity for Mr. Obama to argue that the group no longer needs to be a fixation of American policy. ?Until now, we?ve done a good job of disrupting Al Qaeda,? one of Mr. Obama?s top advisers said this year, as the intelligence agencies were secretly zeroing in on the luxurious compound in the suburbs of Islamabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden was killed. ?We?re still not at ?dismantle,? and certainly not at ?defeat.? ?
Today, Mr. Obama can argue he is closer to both those goals. In fact, his aides contended on Sunday evening that Bin Laden?s presumed successors, including Ayman al-Zawahri, have none of his charisma and appeal, and that his death will lead to a fracturing of the organization. The decision to bury Bin Laden?s body at sea was part of a carefully-calibrated effort to avoid having a burial place that would turn into a shrine to the Qaeda leader, a place where his adherents could declare him a martyr.
But none of that assures that the ?alternative narrative? Mr. Obama frequently speaks about will take hold. With the Muslim Brotherhood showing some success in organizing for coming elections in Egypt, and extremist groups hoping to profit from the civil war in Libya and the protests in Syria, it is far from clear that the revolutions under way today will not be hijacked by groups that have a closer affinity to Al Qaeda ideology than democratic reform.
Henry Kissinger noted recently that revolutionaries ?rarely survive the process of the revolution.? There is usually a ?second wave? that can veer off in a different direction. Whether that second wave will follow the path laid out by the young creators of the Arab Spring, or Bin Laden?s acolytes seeking revenge, may well determine whether Mr. Obama can use Bin Laden?s death to put a coda on a grim decade.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=434ef1691d583df7b0b684ad3bbe28c6
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