James S. Robbins wonders what bin Laden’s next move will be in regards to the elections, as well as the Democratic conspiracy theories about an “October surprise” of a bin Laden capture.
The thing is, despite all the arguments that bin Laden is alive I’m not sure I buy it anymore. I had previously thought bin Laden had died at Tora Bora in December of 2001, but a flurry of audio messages from the Qaeda leader seemed to betray that notion. But at the same time isn’t it just slightly odd that someone like bin Laden wouldn’t have shown his face at all in the past three years? The last confirmed image of bin Laden dates back to December of 2001. Since then there’s been nothing that conclusively proves that bin Laden is alive. All Binny would have to do is show up on TV waving around a New York Times from this year to prove that he’s not taking the Sheik Yasin bus to the deepest pits of Hell. But so far all we have are some low-quality audiotapes and a lot of rumors floating around.
We have seen Ayman al-Zawahiri on video speaking on current events recently. One would assume that if we were appearing bin Laden would be too. Yet he remained entirely out of sight.
Does that mean that bin Laden is a smear in the back of a cave wall in Tora Bora? Certainly not conclusively. He could still be plotting somewhere along the desolate, mountainous Afghan/Pakistan frontier. However, the fact that a publicity hound like bin Laden hasn’t done something yet makes one wonder.
What’s important in all of this is that bin Laden is one man. If he were to die, he’d be replaced. Just going after al-Qaeda isn’t enough. We have to change the petri dish of terrorism that the Middle East has become. We have to discredit and defeat the forces of radical Islam worldwide. We have to defend human rights against those who would set of a bomb to murder dozens of children then two more to kill rescue personnel. If bin Laden were capture tomorrow, the war would not end. The war will only end when the forces of radical Islamism join the Nazi Party, the kamikaze and the Stasi in the dustbin of history.
