Bin Ladin Doesn't Matter Any More

Capturing or killing Osama or Usama Bin Laden the leader of Al Qaeda, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and would be Caliph of Islam would have little or no impact upon the War on Terror.
Whatever military threat Bin Laden once posed has long since dissipated, Osama has only around a thousand followers and maybe $200,000 according to media reports. Bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan has been destroyed and his army has been dispersed. Nor is Bin Laden very effective as a leader or inspiration, hordes of Islamic men haven’t rallied to his banner, there have been no Islamic revolutions and no major terrorist attacks on the USA since Sept. 11.
The only value Bin Laden has is as a sort of symbol of and spokesman for militant Islam. There are many others who can fulfill that role and some of them maybe more effective than Bin Laden himself. All Bin Laden can do these days is to send tapes to Al Jazeera to promote the cause, there are lots of terrorists who can do that.
The main reason Bin Laden doesn’t matter any more is the nature of the enemy we fight. The enemy we are facing in the War on Terror is a mass movement of Islamic men dedicated to inflicting a popular interpretation of traditional Islam on the world. The Islamic extremists we call terrorists believe that the only legitimate government is one that enforces their interpretation of Islamic law and under their belief system such a government has a holy duty to try and impose that brand of Islamic law on as much of the world as possible as the great Islamic Empires of history did.
These men believe that God has given them a Holy mandate to conquer the world and destroy all they see as unholy in the process. This is not some bigoted nightmare it is what a minority of Moslems, actually believe. The vast majority of Moslems reject this nonsense, as the lack of response to Bin Laden’s idiotic preaching proves, but hundreds of thousands do believe it.
So what is the enemy we are facing in this war? It is a mass movement, a movement that combines modern communications technology such as the internet with an ancient faith that is still potent in our modern world. This is a new kind of mass movement with no leaders, simply messages posted through the media, the fanatic gets an e-mail saying that the boys need help in Iraq and goes.
In the past one needed vast resources to mobilize a mass movement, printing presses, radio stations, TV stations, etc. Today all you need is a computer and an e-mail account or a website. It took Hitler years to build up a mass Nazi movement with traditional organization, today all a fanatic needs to do is attract a little media attention to mobilize hundreds of thousands of fanatics all over the world. Hitler and Stalin needed radio stations to spread their message, all Bin Laden has to do is Fedex or email his latest message to Al Jazeera and CNN. If Bin Laden gets killed, a new fanatic steps up and takes his place. It’s a little thing called Fourth Generation Warfare
If Bin Laden is killed by the US military or captured and executed by Americans he becomes a martyr for the cause. If Bin Laden remains alive and issuing proclamations from his cave, he is nothing but a cowardly loudmouth, a rich old man claiming to fight Jihad from his couch. If he dies of natural causes, Bin Laden is proven as a fraud and nobody will care about him. If Bin Laden dies or gets captured well, every fanatic out there will have free market to claim to speak in his name.
So next time you hear somebody ranting and raving about how we need to capture Bin Laden and hang him at ground zero. Remember this, that will be a meaningless act, the day after Bin Laden dies we’ll have a new terrorist boss to go after, our soldiers will still be dying on the battlefield and we’ll still be in danger of terrorist attack here at home.