Osama bin Laden’s death is a fork in the road

The killing of the al-Qaida leader either means the end of the ’war on terror’ or more Bin Ladens rising to continue the fight

Let that be it. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is a fork in the road of world politics.

One way lies a fundamental rethink of US and British policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, a chance to drain the swamp that bred 9/11.

That way is the end of the "war on terror" launched in the aftermath of Bin Laden’s atrocious crimes of September 2011. His act of violence became first the cause and rapidly the pretext for many more such acts, vastly more costly in terms of lives lost. Let us recall that nearly all of those dead as a consequence of the neocon war – a million by now ? – were as innocent of involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington as those caught in the World Trade Centre were of any offence against Muslims.

Travelling this route means seizing the opportunity to start peace talks in Afghanistan leading to the swiftest possible withdrawal of the armies of occupation from that country, ending a conflict that can be halted no other way. Recall that the war of 2001 was ostensibly launched to uproot al-Qaida from its base in Afghanistan.

In 2011, Bin Laden’s organisation has long since been denied Afghan sanctuary – but has instead found it in Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, the Maghreb and beyond as the war has spread.

It means resisting pressure from the US military to end its pull-out from Iraq and instead bringing to an end the greatest disaster of the century, a war and occupation that has done limitless violence to the Iraqi people and more than anything else to pour fuel on the fire of terrorism.

It means ending the Nato bombardment of Libya and instead promoting a political dialogue to end the civil conflict there, the only approach that offers any prospect of a regime in Tripoli enjoying some measure of legitimacy – not to mention saving civilian lives in reality, as opposed to debased Cameroonian rhetoric.

It means President Obama renewing his swiftly abandoned efforts to halt Israeli colonisation of the West Bank and pushing for a lasting agreement offering justice to the Palestinian people.

And it means withdrawing support from the collection of autocrats, royal and republican alike, who have sat atop the Arab peoples in the western interest for too long. The uprisings throughout the region have not yet led to the required rethink. Still policy in London and Washington oscillates between armed interference (Libya) and support for repression (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia).

The other fork in the road – the road of continuity with the "war on terror" – offers only the promise of thousands more Bin Ladens arising, vowing to take the fight to the western powers in the only way they see available.

They will draw sustenance not from the al-Qaida leader’s death as much as from the continuation of the interference and aggression that gave his organisation, with its perverted politics, its following in the first place.

The Anglo-American policy of endless war has gifted Bin Laden the sort of legacy he would doubtless have liked. A change of course can now deny him that memorial. It should be done not just to make us safer, but because it is right.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/bin-laden-death-fork-road