By Toby Harnden WorldThe details have been pouring out in the 24 hours since Osama bin Laden met his end at the hands of the US Navy’s SEAL Team 6. Amid all the detail, what really matters in terms of what’s already happened and what happens next? Drawing a breath after working on the story virtually non-stop, here are some things worth flagging up.
Why did Barack Obama choose to kill Osama bin Laden rather than attempt to capture him? I spoke to a former active duty SEAL today who told me that the mission was clearly designed to kill even though there was the time and opportunity to carry out more stealthy raid – arriving on foot or by vehicle - that could well have resulted in capture. By its nature, a helicopter assault alerts the targets and almost guarantees stiff resistance. Perhaps Obama felt that assasination was preferable to the messy issues of interrogation, imprisonment and trial. But imagine the intelligence that could have been gained from bin Laden and even the two couriers said to have died with him?
moreWas Pakistan complicit in the attack? The US government says no and the Pakistanis are facing flak for allowing bin Laden to hide in their midst. But why carry out a loud, guns blazing assault in a military town if there’s a chance the Pakistani will respond? It seems very plausible to me that the Pakistanis were in on this and the US is allowing them to save face in the eyes of its anti-American population by stating Islamabad had no knowledge.
Was bin Laden betrayed? The detailed story being put out by the White House is too neat. If it’s true then it will help al-Qaeda’s review of what happened. Why would the US do that? My hunch is that a human source was involved and the story we’re being told it a cover at least in part. Perhaps one of the two couriers betrayed him? We’re told they’re dead but how do we know that?
How much will Barack Obama milk this? Any politician would want to extract the maximum political capital from this but by the end of the day I was beginning to feel a tad queasy about how many White House aides and Democrats and TV reporters were praising Obama ad nauseum for his "gutsy" call in ordering the raid. Obama is heading to Ground Zeroon Thursday and needs to be careful not to be seen to be exploiting the issue.
Will the White House release pictures of bin Laden’s corpse? There seems to be an odd indecision about whether to take this step. Or perhaps it’s a deliberate spinning out of the news so it fills up the rest of the week. I’m sure the pictures are gruesome (bullets to the head tend to be messy) but I find it hard to believe this issue wasn’t anticipated and some quick reconstruction work done for the photographer.
Was the helicopter shot down? US officials say it was mechanical failure, no one was injured or killed and I see no reason not to be honest about it. But there’s a lot of caginess that suggests there might be more to meet the eye on this one. In addition, there have been some eye witness reports suggesting a shooting down, though of course there’s no telling the reliability of these.
Who will be the first Republican to criticise Obama? It’s a long time until the 2012 election and I see no more reason that killing bin Laden would guarantee re-election any more than an intelligence failure and a terrorist attack on US soil would guarantee defeat. But there’s no doubt that the GOP is in a bit of a spot on this one. It’s probably a good thing for the party that the primary race is not under way yet.
How will this affect the Arab Spring? Al-Qaeda has played little or no part in the Arab Spring, which largely discredited the Islamist ideology. Will bin Laden’s death hasten the spread of democracy in the Middle East? There’s every possibility it will.
Will opinion shift on the justification for and effectiveness of Bush’s harsh detention and interrogation regime? Notwithstanding 3 above, it seems that some significant information was gleaned from detainee interrogations, presumably at Guantanamo.
Will bin Laden’s death hasten a US withdrawal from Afghanistan? The war is unpopular and what legitimacy it has in the eyes of Americans rested at least in part on the continued ability of bin Laden to evade his pursuers. Although there is no reason why the fact that bin Laden is now sleeping with the fishes should alter the military equation in Afghanistan it might well change the political one in the US. Expect more calls for a speeded-up pullout.
© The Telegraph Group
London 2011
