Volume CXXXIII, Number 13 January 25, 2002 f

We'll never catch bin Laden
CRAIG GIAMMONA

In the weeks and months that followed the events of September 11, it was difficult to turn on the TV or open a newspaper without Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush assuring me that U.S. Special Forces would capture Osama bin Laden. They were very emphatic about this; whether it was Bush speaking from a convenience store in Crawford, Texas, or Rumsfeld from a podium in Washington, D.C., the message was clear: "We'll get bin Laden."

I was, and still am, convinced that we will never find bin Laden. I also feel that our government's strong rhetoric served only to mythologize a man who I would rather forget.

Originally, I passed off the irrational pipedream of catching bin Laden in an area-most of Afghanistan and its border region with Pakistan-which is as lawless and unregulated as any on earth, as just that: an irrational pipedream. But I have recently realized that Bush and his cronies are not that stupid. In fact, I believe the opposite to be true. Bush surely is not a well-spoken or extremely intelligent man, but he is a shrewd businessman with a keen political sense that allows him to pursue his conservative agenda within the workings of our American political system. Bush understands how political relationships work, the earliest proof of this being his defeat of the immensely popular Ann Richards in the 1992 race for Texas governor. He won the race largely because of his ability to rally popular Texas Democrats to his side.

Giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, or at least accepting that he understands how to play the political game, led me to understand his comments in regard to bin Laden's capture as a public relations campaign designed to calm the shaken American people and reassure them that the U.S. would stop at nothing to eliminate evil from the planet. As innocuous as this may seem, I fear that it will have lasting policy implications as our government moves its focus away from Afghanistan and reshapes its anti-terrorism agenda.

Like any public-relations campaign, "We'll get bin Laden" came and went. What is left is a country full of people seeking retribution for a horrible act and once again believing that America represents inherent good in pursuit of pure evil. Again, putting a little faith in Bush or at least the hawkish political players he has surrounded himself with, I find it hard to believe that officials in the White House and Pentagon ever genuinely believed that bin Laden would be captured. Instead, I see the reinvention of evil, rather then a clear articulation of actual policy and governmental goals, as the primary motivation for the consistent mention of bin Laden and his impending capture.

I find it hard to argue that Osama bin Laden is not evil. He trained men to carry out a mission designed to kill as many innocent civilians as possible-if that's not evil, then I really don't know what is.

Still, just because bin Laden is evil, I don't think that those who oppose him are inherently "good." This is the dichotomy that Bush and Rumsfeld's rhetoric continues to create. Not since communist Russia was dissolved and democratized has the American government faced an enemy as recognizable and contemptible as bin Laden. In many ways, the fall of the USSR signified the death of evil in foreign policy.

Consequently, this ended our government's ability to assume the role of "good guy" simply by default. A dichotomy does not stand up without both its prongs. It is far more difficult to assure 270 million Americans that you are acting in the name of justice and good when your actions are not juxtaposed by those of a force generally regarded as evil.

The foreign policy "blank check" that formed our opposition to the inherent evils of communism has been absent since communism fell in the early '90s, and who would be more aware of this than Bush and his team of unilateral Cold War thugs? Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and the rest of Bush's cabinet are all keenly aware of the political benefits of having an enemy who exists but cannot be eliminated in any definitive way. They have to know that we will never catch bin Laden, but they think that to express this to the American people isn't an option. Instead, the current administration will use the search for bin Laden and the pure evil he represents as leverage in pursuit of its conservative agenda.