Should Obama chase Osama?

On Sunday the president-elect told "60 Minutes" he wants to capture or kill bin Laden. Is he setting himself up for failure?

By Juan Cole

Read more: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden, Opinion, Iraq War, Juan Cole, Barack Obama

Reuters

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is seen speaking in this video grab provided to Reuters on Sept. 11, 2007.

Nov. 18, 2008 | In Sunday's interview with "60 Minutes," President-elect Barack Obama reaffirmed that "it is a top priority for us to stamp out al-Qaida once and for all," adding, "and I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al-Qaida." Obama argued that the Saudi terrorist "is not just a symbol" but is rather "the operational leader" of the organization, which he said is still planning attacks against U.S. targets.

Obama's quiet seriousness of purpose is a welcome contrast with George W. Bush's swaggering pronouncements about bin Laden being "wanted dead or alive," or his darkly comic standard answer to the question of why bin Laden has not yet been caught. "He's hiding," Bush likes to say.

And for those who believe Bush, obsessed with Iraq, has either not tried very hard or has secretly avoided capturing bin Laden, Obama's words are probably reassuring. Now American attention will return to the real author of 9/11, and a more determined effort might yield fruit. But the question is whether the new president should really focus his attention on bin Laden, and spend his political capital in a renewed attempt to bring him to justice. There are many reasons why a stepped-up and publicized pursuit of bin Laden may prove costly to Barack Obama.

The first is the danger of failing, just like his predecessor. After the bravado of the early post-9/11 period, and vows to catch his quarry, Bush came up empty. An enemy who struck at the beginning of his first term is still at loose in the Pakistani-Afghan borderlands at the end of his second.

Some in the region believe that Bush never caught his nemesis on purpose. A secular-minded newspaper in Afghanistan said in October that French troops in that country as part of the NATO contingent had for some time alleged that they were on the verge of capturing bin Laden when their American counterparts stopped them from doing so. The paper referred to a French documentary that featured interviews with the troops and that maintained that the Bush administration needed bin Laden to be at large in order to justify its military expansion into the region.

This theory is a more sinister variant of the view that capturing Osama was simply not very high on Bush's list of priorities, and that he put all his resources instead into destroying Saddam Hussein. Already in spring of 2002, as his administration geared up for what was supposed to be a swift and stunning victory in Iraq, Bush was trying to deflect attention from his failure to capture the author of 9/11. Bush downplayed bin Laden's importance, and said he didn't seem to be at the center of any command structure. He decried the supposed fallacy of focusing on "one person" and admitted, "I truly am not that concerned about him."

Should the next president now be playing up bin Laden's importance? Does bin Laden merit such attention? In a speech at the Atlantic Council last week, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, largely concurred with the points Obama has been making about the continued centrality of al-Qaida in its Pakistani haunts to U.S. security concerns. Contrary to Republican politicians who still speak of Iraq as the central front in the "war on terror," Hayden forthrightly announced, "Al-Qaida in Iraq is on the verge of strategic defeat."

In contrast, Hayden said, nowadays "all the threats we have to the West have a thread that takes them back to the tribal region along the Af-Pak border." He also underlined that he considers capturing the organization's leader a top priority.

But Hayden stressed bin Laden's symbolic importance more than his operational role, observing, "Because of his iconic stature, his death or capture clearly would have a significant impact on the confidence of his followers." Unlike Obama, Hayden said that bin Laden "appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads."

Rumors swirl in the region about the whereabouts and activities of Osama bin Laden. It is held by some observers that the world's most wanted man is no longer with us. In September of 2006, a French newspaper carried a leak from that country's General Directorate for External Security to the effect that Osama bin Laden had died that summer of typhoid fever. French intelligence had received the report from Saudi intelligence, which should have good sources on al-Qaida. The Saudis backed off the assertion, apparently because they could not locate the grave site. But it should be underlined that the puritan Wahhabi creed of Saudi Arabia forbids headstones and stipulates that the body should be wrapped in a shroud and buried by sunset of the day of death, so that a Saudi grave in a wilderness might never be discovered.

The speculation about bin Laden's demise has been fueled by his failure to issue any further videotapes after his intervention in the 2004 presidential election. Audiotapes would be easier to forge or to splice together. Even his recent audiotapes, such as the one last May threatening Europe, may have been recorded much earlier. Obviously, Obama will not be able to catch his man if he is in an unmarked grave in South Waziristan.

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