Last Saturday, March 10, the world’s most famous fugitive and face of international terrorism, Osama Bin Muhammed bin Awad bin Laden, celebrated his 50th birthday. Assuming of course, he is still alive.
For the purposes of this column, we shall assume he is. The logic behind this presumption is that until the “breaking news” photos of his corpse are splashed across television screens and newspapers as proof of his ultimate demise, he is as good as alive, and able to elicit the same amount of fear regardless. The United States military, in order mostly to pre-empt conspiracy theorists, made no effort to hide the grisly pictures of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi or Uday and Qusay Hussein, sons of the late Saddam Hussein who himself received a televised video death.
But I digress. Bin Laden remains the symbolic figurehead for the shadowy Al-Qaeda group, even though those in the know will tell you that he has almost no authority anymore, considering his unknown location. It has been more than five years since he’s gone on the run, most likely changing hiding spots in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was one of these hiding spots, the infamous Tora Bora mountains, where U.S. troops came closest to capturing him back in 2001. Alas, he escaped and the rest of the story has been left to hazy speculation on the part of bored political junkies.
As many have pointed out, he has also been unusually quiet recently. There haven’t been any of the once-frequent audiotapes since early last year. The last known video was even farther back, in October of 2004. One of the last times he spoke though, he offered an uncharacteristic truce to the Americans, which of course was swiftly refused. Yet his silence hasn’t kept some in the Bush administration from relentlessly reminding people that he is still out there, maybe just around the street corner, lurking in a dark place, ready to pounce out like a masked 90s horror villain. Other more cynical attitudes say he’s just being kept in a box in the President’s closet, ready to be brought out to invigorate a failing legacy.
This columnist would go as far as to state the number one driving political force in all of American politics for the last few years has been the fear of Bin Laden. More so than right-left friction, more than the Iraq War fallout, more than even the general dislike for President Bush. It is that chronic fear of another attack, another day waking up to breaking news on CNN and panicked phone calls from relatives that has shaped the voting patterns of the electorate and politicians alike. Bush may have his finger on the nuclear button, but Bin Laden has his on the nerves of every American old enough to watch the news.
There is, one would imagine, a different kind of fear on the part of U.S. military forces. What if Bin Laden has already died of natural causes? Certainly that would be anti-climactic, denying them the glory of a final gunbattle with him and his bodyguards and the satisfaction of finally catching their man. As well, it would once and for all end this fear of the ever-potent bogeyman in the public. Such a consequence would only make way for politicians to declare the War on Terror at an end and dilute any arguments for further military action in Middle East countries. Sure, they could dig up some other creepy bearded man and say that he’s the real bad guy (and they will), but it would still mark the end of an era.
What kind of man could elude the pursuit of the most powerful nation on Earth for five years with a $25 million bounty on his head, “dead or alive”? A man who competes only with the President of the United States for being the most famous living human being? He’s described as soft-spoken and even charming in person. A multi-millionaire through inheritance and the 17th of maybe as many as 55 children, few could have imagined this soccer-playing Saudi could have gained the notoriety that he did. Regardless of how the rest of his life plays out, Bin Laden has scorched a place in the history books if for no other reason than being the first Emmanuel Goldstein of the 21st century.
=//Turnquest
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