I don’t think Bin Laden’s important any more. Certainly not as important as he was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago. There’s certainly a bump in the amount of terrorism and suspected terrorism going on around the world right now, but I think his, and Al-Qaeda’s role is vastly overstated. Let me explain:
Bin Laden’s never been shy about his intentions: to drive a wedge between Western culture and Muslims, to preserve the strict form of Islam he practices, and to start a world-wide holy war between Islam, and non-Muslim powers. He clearly believes that in that jihad, Islam will come out the victor and will overtake the world.
Pre-9/11, Bin Laden worked with Muslims, through Al-Qaeda, to prepare for this war. But it didn’t prepare for war like a standing army or citizen militias like Hamas and the IRA. Al-Qaeda was meant to return to their countries and wait. They didn’t have to wait long.
The attacks of 9/11 were a wake-up call to the world. Governments around the world realized they were all at risk from Muslim extremists, and reacted immediately. For a while all Muslims became suspect. Even Sikhs from India were killed in the US because people thought they were somehow part of Al-Qaeda. The Muslim community pulled inward, isolating itself in countries, and living in fear of their own governments, of other people, and created the exact kind of environment that nurtures homegrown cells.
These homegrown cells, only loosely directed by the Al-Qaeda organization, led by the ranks of people trained in the years before 9/11 have taken off, planning and executing attacks through Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia.
Bin Laden doesn’t need to call the shots any more. The young disaffected Muslims in countries feel persecuted, singled out, and put upon. Worse yet they see American and European foreign policies that support what they see as the further persecution of Muslims in places like Israel, Iraq, Chechnya, and Kashmir. This perceived feeling of persecution (interestingly enough the same kind of perceived persecution that leads Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity to claim that Christmas is under attack) feeds their rage and helps to propel them to action. Bin Laden’s only role in this is to make video tapes and audio tapes urging them to action.
But I don’t think capturing Bin Laden will have much effect at this point, other than satisfying the desire for justice in the US. He’s not in charge any more.
He didn’t direct the angry protests, riots, and murders that came from the Danish Mohammed cartoons. The rose spontaneously out of those same feelings that Bin Laden sought to engender. He didn’t have to direct someone to put bombs on German trains (that thankfully didn’t go off): http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2139974,00.html. Homegrown Muslims felt their own furor at the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and acted. Homegrown Muslims in India blew up trains in Mumbai to protest their lack of involvement in the political process. Local Muslims in England blew themselves up on 7/7, and more recently a different group were at least discussing doing something new.
And this is why I don’t think Bin Laden’s important any more. He doesn’t direct anything anymore, in any tangible sense anyway. Instead he probably sits in some house in Peshawar watching the events of the world unfold and makes policy statements, like an elder statesman of terror. He drove a big wedge between cultures, or if you believe some, shone a spotlight on an existing gulf between cultures, and making that separation hurt.
Capturing Bin Laden would certainly soothe our desire for justice and for a time probably make the world feel safer, but if anything I think that it would increase the general sense of persecution and rage in some Muslim circles. And things would probably, for a time, get much worse from there.
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