When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, one of the first people I thought of was James Loney, whom I interviewed two weeks ago.
Loney has seen the face of terror up close he spent 118 days as a hostage in Iraq, held by jihadi fighters who wanted to ransom him and his three colleagues in order to get money to buy weapons and wage war against their American occupiers. A devout pacifist, after he was rescued Loney refused to testify against his kidnappers, even though they had killed his friend and colleague Tom Fox, and put him and his loved ones through unspeakable misery for four months. Loney was afraid that the Iraqi judicial system would torture and execute his captors. In his time in Iraq he had seen enough violence, and he wanted it to stop there, with him.
If there is such a thing as evil, bin Laden was surely its personification. He deserved to be held accountable for the atrocities he committed and inspired while exhibiting an inhuman lack of remorse.
It’s not hard to understand the relief felt by many Americans at his death. Their country has lived in far too much fear for the past ten years, and bin Laden’s demise is a symbolic victory over that terror.
But I cannot share the joy of the people in the rowdy crowd that gathered in front of the White House last night. I can only see bin Laden’s assassination as a bad solution to a terrible problem – a grim reminder that, as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya continue, the West has yet to find a way to achieve the outcomes we desire without the use of deadly force.
Moments after President Obama’s speech announcing bin Laden’s death, the U.S. State Department issued a heightened alert, warning that there was now an increased threat of a terror attack in response.
bin Laden’s acolytes and those he inspired all over the world are at this moment sharpening their knives and stripping their bomb wires with renewed vigour. Security forces are being deployed in the streets of western capitals in higher numbers, and soldiers all over the world are loading up for the next fight. The raid against bin Laden occurred 90 km from Islamabad, and already it is being seen by many inside Pakistan as a violation of that country’s sovereignty. Its effect on Pakistan, which harbours a nuclear arsenal and deeply fractious internal politics, can only be destabilizing.
Some will say that bin Laden’s death marks the end of a decade-long struggle, or at the least the beginning of the end of the most notorious and deadly terrorist group active in the world today. But I suspect Loney would urge you take a wider view, and see that this is one more deadly episode in a cycle of violence from which we have found no means of escape.