Beyond Bin Laden (9 page)

(The other two were that America should always offer the world a positive vision of hope and opportunity rooted in our founding convictions of liberty, justice, equality, opportunity, and the worth and value of every human being; and that America should work to nurture a sense of common interests and common values with other peoples across the world.)

Our public diplomats and military personnel worked to widely publicize Bin Laden's bombings, especially his attacks on Muslims. Slowly, and largely because of his own atrocities like the bombing of a wedding in Jordan, the world's view of Bin Laden began to change. In an op-ed I wrote in 2007 after a Bin Laden videotape depicting him with a freshly black beard emerged, I noted that the world's view of the terrorist mastermind was turning as dark as his newly dyed beard.

While many foreign publics, especially in Muslim-majority countries, were still angry at America because of our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were no longer supportive of Al Qaeda and its leader.

Polls in the two nations that suffered some of the worst of Al Qaeda's violence—Afghanistan and Iraq—showed that more than ninety percent of those populations had unfavorable views of Al Qaeda and of Bin Laden himself. Polling in Turkey in 2005 found that ninety percent of its citizens believed the Al Qaeda bombings in London, Istanbul, Madrid, and Egypt were unjust and unfair; eighty-six percent thought that there was no excuse for condoning the September 11 attacks; and seventy-five percent said Bin Laden does not represent Muslims. Support for terrorist tactics had fallen in seven of the eight predominantly Muslim countries polled as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project since 2002. In 2002 in Lebanon, seventy-four percent of the population thought suicide bombing could sometimes be justified; by 2007, that number had dropped to thirty-four percent—still too high, but a stark reversal. Similar declines in support had occurred in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Jordan.

Perhaps most significantly, Muslim populations were rejecting Bin Laden's attempts to pervert their faith.
WorldPublicOpinion.org
 found in April 2007 that large majorities in Egypt (eighty-eight percent), Indonesia (sixty-five percent), and Morocco (sixty-six percent) agreed with the statement "Groups that use violence against civilians, such as Al Qaeda, are violating the principles of Islam. Islam opposes the use of such violence."

I told audiences across the world that Bin Laden's strategic goal was to divide us, to try to make this a case of East versus West, Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. We must deny him that opportunity, I argued, by making it clear that our struggle is between civilized people of many faiths and cultures, and his "death cult" that perverts all faith with its acts of murder and glorification of violence. And I believe this should be our posture going forward, in a struggle that goes on.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton are right to reach out to the world, as President Bush and Secretary Rice did before them, and I hope they will stand even more vigorously for human rights and human freedom. For all his boldness in ordering the military action that got Bin Laden, many of us feel that President Obama has been slow and timid to speak up in support of brave voices standing for greater freedom. He was slow in speaking out when brave Iranians risked their lives in protests calling for greater freedom, he was slow to speak and act in Libya, and he was late and reticent in condemning the brutal murders of hundreds of protestors by the regime in Syria. America must always proudly and loudly stand with those who are advocating for their freedom.

And America must continue and expand its outreach to the peoples of the world. During my tenure at the State Department, I encouraged our diplomats to communicate more broadly with foreign audiences through the media and new blogging efforts. I expanded educational and exchange programs, bringing influential journalists, clerics, and other leaders to America to let them meet us for themselves to help counter stereotypes and misinformation. I worked to counter terrorist efforts to radicalize young people by engaging them constructively, through English language teaching, educational exchanges, and sports diplomacy. We partnered with local governments in almost forty predominantly Muslim countries to host summer camp programs to teach English and leadership and citizenship skills to young people. For most of these young people, it was the first time they had ever met an American.

When we teach English, we are not exporting cultural imperialism. We're giving young people a skill to succeed in international business; we're building hope. Years ago now I met with a group in Morocco, in the same neighborhood that produced the Casablanca suicide bombers of 2003. When I asked one young man what difference learning English had made in his life, he told me: "I have a job, and none of my friends do." That young man also has a reason to live rather than to kill himself and others in a suicide bombing.

And I will never forget a young man I met in Turkey, who asked a haunting question through a translator: "Does the Statue of Liberty still face out?" I think he meant, Is the United States still that welcoming country, still that land of hope and opportunity that I grew up dreaming about? I told him yes, and I believe our challenge as Americans is to make sure that our answer is always yes, that we continue to look outward and engage with the world.

And we must fight bigotry and prejudice in our own country. Muslim Americans are our neighbors and colleagues—and our fellow citizens. They are our partners in confronting the common threat of Al Qaeda terrorism, and we must not allow Bin Laden's legacy to unfairly tarnish them. One of my Muslim friends told me that when Bin Laden's operatives hijacked those airplanes, he hijacked her religion, too. I think of the Shakespeare quote: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." I can't think of any good that went to rest at sea with Osama bin Laden, but the evil he unleashed is still with us. The world is a safer, better, more peaceful place without him. Bringing him to justice was a hugely important moment in our cause. But it was not the final moment. Our common struggle continues, and unites good and decent people across the world.

 

Karen Hughes
, global vice-chair of Burson-Marsteller, served as counselor to President George W. Bush and as under secretary of state for public diplomacy with the rank of ambassador.

 

The search for Osama bin Laden ended May 1, 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs braved a firefight inside a compound in Pakistan and killed the man responsible for the death of more than twenty-seven hundred victims on September 11, 2001. The long hunt is over. Justice has been served.

But the struggle against international terrorism is far from finished.

This somber knowledge should temper our celebrations. Osama bin Laden has been consigned to a well-deserved watery grave. But the ideas he embodied—of perverted religious impulse and monstrous disregard for human life—unfortunately remain alive and well.

Bin Laden's death raises as many questions as it provides answers. Will it dampen the spirit and effectiveness of the leaders and followers of Al Qaeda? Hopefully. Might it simply motivate Al Qaeda leaders to respond with greater vengeance as they keep an eye on potential martyrdom? Hopefully not.

One thing, however, remains clear. This conflict is far from finished. We must remain on guard because the stakes are simply immense. In a world with loose nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario worse than the nightmare we suffered nearly a decade ago. Reportedly, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed once indicated that a nuclear device would be exploded were Bin Laden killed. Hopefully, that proves to be an empty threat. But it would be naive and foolhardy not to believe that Al Qaeda will try to strike us with everything that they've got.

As we move forward, it would be wise to remember another lengthy encounter that took decades to win—the Cold War. At the time, some well-intentioned Americans questioned the wisdom of confronting Soviet tyranny. The United States, they said, should accommodate the Soviet empire. After all, such an approach would reduce tensions between East and West and thus lessen the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Fortunately, every U.S. president from Harry Truman to George H. W. Bush—Democrats and Republicans alike—saw things differently. So did most Americans. For more than forty years, America's leaders and citizenry consistently stood vigilant against Soviet totalitarianism. We never abandoned our support for the captive peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. We confronted Soviet expansionism whenever possible. There were inevitable mistakes along the way. We found ourselves fighting difficult wars in faraway places, like Vietnam and Korea. But even during the toughest moments, American resolve stayed firm.

During the Cold War, American presidents articulated a policy based on fundamental values and pursued it through a pragmatic mix of military strength and tough diplomacy. In the end, freedom prevailed. On November 9, 1989, East and West Berliners began tearing down the wall that had divided them for nearly forty years. Only two years later, the Soviet Union itself dissolved. The Cold War was over without the nuclear conflagration many had feared.

We need to bear this example in mind today. The struggle with terrorism does not end with Bin Laden's death. We must continue to work with allies to identify and neutralize terrorist threats. We need to use all the means at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, and, yes, military—to suppress those who would do us harm and strip them of their financial support. We need to remain focused and stay the course.

There is another lesson we can learn from the Cold War as we move forward—how it concluded. In its aftermath, President George H. W. Bush would not condone triumphant celebration. Figuratively speaking, he refused to dance on the ruins of the Berlin Wall. The critics were appalled. After forty years of intense competition, the West had won. Some demanded metaphorical "high fives."

But the president's vision was larger. Under his leadership, we built strong diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and negotiated the "mother of all soft landings"—freedom throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the reunification of Germany inside NATO, and the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union.

Today, the world is again watching to see how the United States will respond—this time to the death of Osama bin Laden. I strongly believe that we should savor this moment for what it is—a victorious step, but only one in a long journey. We should be particularly proud of the brave men and women of our military and intelligence communities who located Bin Laden and then killed him. They are our best Americans, and we can all learn from their dedication and courage. We should also acknowledge the efforts of both President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush. Partisan claims of credit are more than just unseemly. They corrode the national consensus that will be necessary for us to prevail in our struggle against terrorism.

This is no time to get caught up in gratuitous chest-thumping. We need to continue our efforts to build bridges to the Islamic world. Our greatest weapon against terrorism is the majority of Muslims who repudiate terrorism. The ongoing Arab Spring grants the United States a unique opportunity to support the just aspirations of citizens around North Africa and the Middle East. The people there must view the United States as a supporter of badly needed reform. That support will, of necessity, vary in type, amount, and intensity from country to country, depending upon the circumstances in each country and the extent of our national interest in each.

Above all, however, Americans should recognize the very real possibility that we may get hit again in a devastating way. We must keep our nerve when—and not if—terrorists strike us again.

A wicked man is dead. However, his wicked ideas live on. Will we defeat them? Yes. We will never be overcome by apostles of death who have nothing to offer but hate and destruction. But we will prevail only if our resolve remains strong and our focus sharp, as they were during the long decades of the Cold War.

 

James A. Baker III,
senior partner with the law firm Baker Botts, was the nation's sixty-first secretary of state under President George H. W. Bush and sixty-seventh secretary of the treasury under President Ronald Reagan. He also served those two presidents as White House chief of staff. He led presidential campaigns over the course of five consecutive elections from 1976 to 1992.

 

 

Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and -women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong.

A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America—with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring of strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could. Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C., to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks.