Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and How Government Always Wins The War on Terror

It’s been one year since that strange evening in May 2011 when
President Barack Obama reported that Al-Qaeda head Osama Bin
Laden, so long mysteriously absent from the world stage, had been
found and killed by U.S. forces. One year later and the U.S.
government
still refuses to release photos or video
 to prove Bin
Laden really died in the way described, but the
latest Time has the
action-packed pages that relate just how the raid went down

(for
real this time
!). No photos because the risk is too great that
pictures of Bin Laden’s body would incite violence. Even though
Al-Qaeda is, according to senior U.S. officials, “essentially
gone”
 and with lesser affiliates capable of doing only
minor harm to U.S. interests.

Except that, according to recently-released documents found with
Bin Laden in his Pakistan hideaway, Al-Qaeda was trying to make a
come-back and had considered such bold schemes
as assassinating President Barack Obama.
 So, which
one is it? Have we won yet, or is the risk from terrorism still
dire enough to justify more drone strikes in more countries, as
well as the potential for the indefinite detainment of
Americans?

It’s been nearly 11 years since September 11 and the man
responsible for the death of 3,000 Americans is gone at last, but
we are still not safe enough. This vaguely-defined effort continues
to be a perfect example of government power which exists only to
sustain itself. There’s always a threat which demands government
action, be it drugs or
financial collapse
or the potential for 10 percent
unemployment. The cost of not intervening is always presumed to be
worse. How can you disprove it? And what’s more serious than the
safety of Americans?

This means that whatever the price of American empire, it must
be worth it. You say the odds of an American dying in a terrorist
attack are
one in 80,000?
Well, if the government weren’t fighting them
abroad, things would be worse at home. How many terrorist attacks
might there have been if not for this fight against them? (Never
mind how many there would be in a world
without blow-back or intrusion into foreign affairs. Nor
the FBI’s recent, troubling habit of encouraging pathetic plots so
much that it’s hard to know if many of their touted anti-terrorists
success would have gotten as far as
they did without law enforcement encouragement
.) 

A year after the reason for the invasion of Afghanistan was
killed (in Pakistan), it’s fair to ask: What
has ten years, half a trillion dollars, 11,000 dead Afghan
citizens
 and 1800 dead American troops given
Americans? Hard to say yet, since there are still “long-term
and acute challenges” for Allied forces which may stretch past the

projected exit date of 2014.
 But it’s better than before,
right? Obama spoke in Kabul on Wednesday on how “the dark
cloud of war” will soon be gone and that “there’s a light on the
horizon because of the sacrifices”
the American troops have made.
 (Iraq’s war is officially
over, even if violence,
a $750 million embassy of 16,000
 personnel, and occasional
drone patrols remain.) 

Perhaps that’s progress. And after all, drone strikes are less
terrible than an all-out war. But it may just be harder to stop a
constant level of intrusion overseas than to stop a more
traditional war. Most people
now regret
 at least the war in Iraq. But unless economic
doom finally forces American troops to go home, what are the
chances that they’ll really leave Afghanistan or Iraq (or Yemen, or
Pakistan?) About as good as the chances that they will finally
leave Japan or Germany or South Korea. 

And what of all those pinpricks into the legs of American life
and liberty? The United States now maintains a $50
billion a year
Department of Homeland Security. The National
Security Agency conducts a program of spying on American citizens
in the United States whose scale is still unknown. The
Transportation Security Agency subjects Americans to the regular
humiliations of full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs. The
U.S. government now claims the right to detain indefinitely or
assassinate Americans who are found to have (loosely defined) ties
with terrorism. These items are all part of the cost we pay, along
with the illegal war in Libya as well as drone
strikes
in Yemen and Pakistan, which have killed more than

1400 people
since 2009. But at least they’re
officially real now, those drone strikes
.

The Osama-assassination victory-lap from the Obama
administration closely coincides with the U.S. government’s
claiming the right to use “surgical
strikes”
 against targets in Yemen and Pakistan whose names
the government doesn’t even know. And the U.S. still needs the
ability to detain and
kill American citizens
 who get tangled up in
terror. 

Maybe it’s just one more push and terrorists and dictators
might really be gone. But if so, why did the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) base its claim for indefinite detainment
on an official declaration that the battlefield
can be “the homeland”
at
last?
 And though Obama swore he wouldn’t abuse or use it,
even his most doe-eyed fans should be worried when someone
less lovable
 gets into office, still possessing such
powers.

Allowing for indefinite detainment is such a George
Bush-era signal
that the war can never really be over. Why,
after so many years, does the U.S. government refuse to pinpoint
what an end to the war on terror might resemble, besides
an end to that term?
 Because there’s no reason to find an
ending for such a marvelous excuse for state power.  

Lucy Steigerwald is an
associate editor at Reason.