Tags
Al-Qaeda, arab spring, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism, twitter, United States
As you can tell, this post was not planned at all this morning, but I couldn’t get away from this piece of news: Ossama Bin Laden was killed. He was killed this morning by “a small team of Americans” under the direct control by the U.S. President Barack Obama, as announced by him.
It was first leaked on twitter (enclosed photo). Now, Mr Bin Laden’s on Wikipedia page has been updated to show his death, assuming he was not involved in updating it!
The U.S. said that they already buried him in the sea! How come so quickly? and in the sea? I am not an expert on this issue, but as far as I know this is not according to any Islamic tradition. Their concern that his burial will turn into a shrine is not justified, considering that the Saudi Wahhabi sect does not allow this. No Saudi king has a prominent burial-place.
History has taught us that similar fights (particularly Al-Qaeda-related) have not ended by killing the operations manager, although there is a consensus that Ayman Al-Zawahari is already the actual head of operations.
I saw two conflicting reactions from different parts of the world this morning: people celebrating in Times Square in New York, and people posting some message on Al-Jazeera Mubasher channel assuming Bin Laden to be a martyr!
Surely, many Arabs are rightly angry with the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but some extremists have gone too far. Each side feels happy when the other side is hurt. This issue just puts a bigger challenge before the ‘Arab Spring’. The aim is not only removing the dictators, but building civil democratic societies where violence is NOT the way of ‘sorting out’ problems.
On the other hand, the U.S. foreign policy has a respective challenge too: how to remove this anger felt by the Arab masses, and allow these democratic societies to flourish even when it doesn’t suit them.
This is coming now during the peak of the popular uprising taking place in the Arab world, and ‘stealing’ all the media coverage from it – or at least this morning.
I hope the media coverage of Oussama Bin Laden doesn’t last last long…So the Arab Spring can get back to business, or at least our perception of it can resume its continuity.
I enjoyed reading the post, and sure the whole story ‘smells’ whether the timing or the burial, anyway, as you said, him dead won’t change a thing regarding operations but the world is better off without him. As for the US foreign policy, its not a challenge since you know, they don’t really wish to change anything, they were caught off guard in Tunisia and Egypt, its going to be harder for “ARAB SPRING” to work in other countries (thank the US for that), as for violence, i have to disagree, sometimes it is the only means to SORT OUT things (like in Libya) provided it remains a mean and not an end.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Thanks Ali,
Yes, violence shouldn’t be an end!
The end should be a system that ensure human rights are preserved…the rest usually follows.
If some people still feel that they need be violent to get their freedom & human rights, then this system is not right!
The thing is, I think that reaching what you called SYSTEM (I assumed that you meant buy it Rousseau’s social contract) is a process, and within the process there are various stages that will shape the relation between the governed and the government, historically speaking, everywhere stability was reached in that relation, violence was an essential part of the process ( the french revolution’s Reign of Terror, the American civil war, Oliver Cromwell,s republican Commonwealth of England, the Bolshevik revolution, etc), the other thing is, the social impact of shifting from a SYSTEM into chaos is not resolved overnight, changing slave mentality into citizen mentality takes time, and from that shift of mentality, a certain equilibrium emerges and specifies the Relation mentioned above and thus a new SYSTEM is in place. I do not believe in SPRINGS, but I think that we are witnessing the beginning of the process.
Hope it works out into the SYSTEM you mentioned.
That’s why I said that the challenge before the ‘Arab Spring’, is not just removing dictators, but building civil democratic societies (which is the ‘system’).
So I agree it’s a process, but the aim of the process should be as above! Wether you use violence or not.
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