Bin Laden, death, and justice.

At long last, after nearly twenty years of trying, the Americans have got their man. Osama Bin Laden is dead. In most contexts, this simple fact is a good thing. Without the Bin Laden family’s personal wealth, connections, and cult of personality, terrorism will become more difficult. The current position is happier, for the moment. The method of arrival may yet cause more problems.
President Obama, in his announcement to the nation and a surprised world, struck a careful balance between the celebratory instincts that most Americans felt, and the watchful gaze of world that now includes an increasingly activist middle east and environs. The President recovered his gift for well-placed oratory at a time when its value cannot be overstated. It may yet be undermined by the scenes taking place across America, and the ongoing handling of the issue overall.
The questions for America around Bin Laden's death fall into three categories: the war/criminal terrorism paradigm; the level of triumphalism from America and her allies; and how this plays out in a middle east with an increasingly activist but non-militant movement.

There will undoubtedly be claims in the coming days and weeks that Bin Laden's death was an extrajudicial killing. Something akin to a public breaking on the wheel, a fatal response to the treason of acting against the American state. That will only apply if there comes some evidence that he could have been captured. If that opportunity presented itself and was snubbed by the US in favour of a military response, then they may come to regret it.
Nation-states have long struggled with categorising terrorism. Does it fall under the jurisdiction of the military, or is it a civil and criminal act? In part this is a difficulty caused by terrorism occupying a broad spectrum of activity. Latterly, states have been inclined to take an 'all-in' approach, and say that it generally falls into both. America has greatly muddied the water by affording a third status, of enemy combatants, which is neither judicial nor military whilst being both at the same time. This has, in turn, lead to a great deal of organisational schizophrenia in how it has responded to threats, with some crucial overlaps and double handling accompanying some glaring gaps that have only recently been addressed. That same confusion was present in Obama's oratory today: war is rarely a creature that provides justice.
If this is not war, then America and the world should be regretting that they were unable to prosecute, using the full weight of transparent due process, someone who has perpetrated vicious acts of murder and caused immeasurable harm to the American psyche. If this is not war, then setting out on a 'kill' mission, as has already been suggested, is at best an act of manslaughter. If this is not war, it means that America's own forces are not required to adhere to the same standard that America, the world's policeman, requires of other nations.
If this is war, then talk of justice is grossly misplaced. If this is war, then celebrations should be saved until there is a breakthrough victory, not just the elimination of a figurehead; this is not the death of Hitler, precipitating the end of a long, bloody war of oppression.
To say this will give closure to the victims of 9/11, of whom there have been tens of thousands, both direct and indirect, is to pander to the same logical fallacies that support the death penalty. Obama's enunciation of death as justice was echoed by the families of 9/11 victims, showing just how shaky this is as a basis for satisfaction. The law is, and must be, reason without passion. There are solid reasons, beginning with dispassion, why the victims and their families are left out of the justice process in western societies. Their grief, however real, raw, proximate and huge, adds no intellectual or moral credibility to the judicial process; legal professionals spend many years, their entire lives, in wrestling with these issues.

The celebrations in front of the White House are not just distasteful, they are full of hypocrisy and schadenfreude, the same malice and intolerance that saw dancing in the streets in the hours and days after 9/11. They are born of the same sentiments, mistrust and propaganda that influenced the same scenes with different faces ten years ago. To decry the citizens of Arab nations for celebrating what they saw, correctly or not, as a blow against the Great Satan and then do the same is rank hypocrisy.
Some will have asked, in response to this disquiet, “How many martyrs do extremists need?” The answer, in fact is none. Extremism will exist with or without martyrs. The extremism that breeds terrorism is borne along on a sea of domestic worries, poverty and alienation. Martyrs provide a focal point for that discontentment and alienation, but by the time individuals and communities have reached the point where they are cognitively receptive to such anti-heroes, they are already far-travelled down the road to terror.
Few assume this means the end of terrorism, yet many people still act as though it may be. The US still portrays Al Qaeda as some kind of hierarchical global terrorist organisation, an evil army that tries to eat away at the fabric of American life, like the SMERSH of James Bond fame. To consider Al Qaeda in this way is to fundamentally misunderstand their role, and the general structures of Islamic fundamentalist terror. It would be better to consider Al Qaeda as a one-stop-shop for terrorist funding, training and equipment. The Wal-Mart of terrorism.
Again, there is a dilemma: if the organisation exists in the structured, hierarchical way that it is portrayed by the Americans, then there are a dozen lieutenants willing and ready to step into the breach in place of Bin Laden. If it doesn’t, then fighting it in a military sense is largely pointless, as cells will come and go, facilitated by the base. Eradicating particular cells or uprising will not tackle the underlying issues. In either case, ending the leader of an organisation like this does play to some extremely strong media frames. It also fits perfectly with cognitive frames, the basis for which young and impressionable recruits in the middle east and beyond. Those frames are strengthened and the likelihood of direct action as a result increases greatly.
Bin Laden was a follower of Wahhabi Islam, a small segment of the Sunni branch of the religion. They preach that the Qu’ran and Hadith are the only authoritative texts, and that simple adherence to the interpretations of those texts by academics and clerics causes impurity in Islam. This is important in understanding the Bin Laden framing. Many of the acts he has committed are atrocities that most Muslims cannot align themselves with. Even at that though, as they go about their daily struggles of aspirations thwarted by repressive states and American foreign policy (the lesser jihad, or struggle to overcome), Bin Laden represents a figure that is undertaking the greater jihad.
Alongside this is the frame, floated by the Americans in the wake of 9/11, and now almost beyond contestation, that the extremists are those who hate the western way of life. They believe that we are corrupt, both immoral and amoral, and a decadent society that will destroy itself, much as Marx believed capitalism would eventually eat itself. While some or all of those beliefs may be true, they do not give the totality of the extremists’ position. Bin Laden repeatedly and consistently made reference to the US and coalition forces left in Saudi Arabia, on the sacred grounds of the Umma, the Muslim people. He also consistently and repeatedly made reference to US support for Israeli policies, the same policies that have been denounced by the UN. These are the bases for his support for action, for arming terrorists and taking action against the US. None of this makes his actions right or justifiable, and nor is this an apologist stance for any kind of terrorism, but they are his reasons; reasons only become excuses when they attempt to justify or pardon that which is wrong.

Killing a man who has been positioned as the leader of a putative neo-caliphate, without trial or due process will allow many extremists on both sides to view that the west, and the US in particular, is in direct opposition to Muslim struggles. It is difficult to see how, in the medium to long term, that particular frame can play out well for the US, while there are still American feet in American boots within a hundred miles of Mecca.
Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, populations are increasingly activist. It is difficult to say how Bin Laden’s death will play in those countries that are in the midst of political upheaval. Frames are more open, there is more space for debate and discourse. As citizens of repressive regimes avail themselves of technology and activism to grasp for a new future, America could exercise the soft-power that has been Obama’s byword ‘til now to great effect. There is a vacuum in the region and, however briefly, in the non-government actors sphere. How it is filled is up to the US, but they will fill it with triumphalism at the risk of squandering the greatest opportunity and alignment of chances in two decades.