With Osama bin Laden gone, the world is a better place. It would be even better and better if the other war criminals, who killed one million Arabs and Muslims, while the killing is still ongoing, were to be gone too. I do not wish death upon anyone, but just that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the other members of al-Qaeda, along with the senior members of the administration of George W. Bush, were all put together in the Guantanamo Bay prison, before throwing its key at the sea. President Barack Obama had a smart choice of words as he declared to the Americans and the world the death of Bin Laden. He said that the leader of al-Qaeda was “responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children”, and did not say thousands of Americans. Instead, he combined the other victims of al-Qaeda, the majority of whom being Muslim. When al-Qaeda could not kill ‘Jews and Crusaders', it resorted to killing Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. Nor did the president say “we avenged” the victims, but said that “justice has been done”. He also did not forget to stress that the United States is not, and will never be at war with Islam. This assertion holds true with the U.S. under the Obama administration. However, I have reservations about it when it comes to the previous administration, which brought together a known group of Likudnik enemies of Arabs and Muslims, who falsified the premises for the Iraq war. As a result, the Israel gang allied itself with the Imperialist gang, and Iraq was destroyed atop its inhabitants. Then power there was seized by opportunistic sectarians, with rare exceptions, and the devastation continues to this very day. I wrote time after time that the Bush administration was fully capable of taking out Osama bin Laden, but elected not to, because this would invalidate the pretext for the War on Terror. This was then lost and so were the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know now, through the testimonies of American officers, that an American contingent had besieged Osama bin laden and his men in Tora Bora, and asked for backup to complete the mission, but did not receive backup, and the leader of al-Qaeda survived. Barack Obama achieved in two years what George W. Bush ‘failed' to achieve in eight years. Is this true? We know that Obama is lucky starting with the Democrats choosing him in the state of Illinois after his competitor withdrew in the aftermath of a sex scandal, and lucky because he won a seat in the Senate after his Republican rival was mired in a similar scandal on the eve of the vote. The Republicans then chose Senator John McCain as the presidential candidate. But McCain had nothing in his record except that he was captured in Vietnam, not that he won in that war. Also, Sarah Palin was chosen as his Vice Presidential candidate, to compete with the prominent Senator Joe Biden. Then there was the financial crisis which erupted as George W. Bush was in his final days in the White House, prompting the Americans to discover what disaster the Republicans had caused them and to vote for Obama. I used to think that the luck of the black president had run out on him after he entered the White House. After they regrouped following their loss in the presidential elections and of the majority in both houses of the Congress, the Republicans had the audacity to blame Obama for the financial crisis which they caused themselves and bequeathed to him. Many people believed them, as we saw in the results of the midterm elections last November, when the Republicans regained control of the House and began obstructing every economic or social policy pursued by the president. However, the angel of luck, or all the angels, smiled on the president once again. The killing of Osama bin Laden took his popularity to new heights in mere hours, and perhaps he will be able to preserve his gains until the presidential elections next year. But the threat of al-Qaeda has not ended with the killing of its leader. His deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri remains at large, and I believe him to be the mastermind behind every terrorist attack. He had started in Egypt, and engaged in terrorism against the people of his country and against foreign tourists. When he joined al-Qaeda, he contributed to making it hostile to the whole world, after Osama bin Laden had hitherto not been interested in anything beyond expelling the Americans from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was a black sheep in the midst of a good family, and no family is without a black sheep. While I did not personally know Mohammed bin Laden, I knew Salem, the head of the family after him, who was the opposite of everything what Osama represented. He loved life and he loved people, and had friends in every country, and perhaps I will one day dedicate my column to his story. I also know the present head of the family Bakr bin Laden, a kind-hearted man with a strong moral character, and who steers away from trouble. He has all the qualities that one would like to see in a friend. And again, I write from personal experience and knowledge. [email protected]
