Osama Bin Laden

What happened
On May 1, 2011, with 18 purposeful steps, US president Barack Obama approached a lectern placed in the East Room of The White House. His 10 minute speech began with the statement: “Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people, and the world, that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.”

The announcement followed a raid by Navy SEALS on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been living, despite the widespread assumption that he was holed up in a cave or remote village in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden’s body was then taken to Afghanistan for identification, after which he was quickly buried at sea.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #1 Osama sleeps with the fishes" »

It is easy to feel repulsed by the gruesome details of Colonel Gaddafi’s final moments as they continue to flood the airwaves in the wake of his burial. Yet it is also easy to identify sloppy moral relativism when it creeps into ethical public discourse.

It is easier still to ignore it when you see it in print.  For a change, I thought I might not let a recent example of this slide. There were important operational and ethical differences between the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Colonel Gaddafi.  The prospect of peacefully arresting and extracting a death-seeking jihadist barricaded in a fortified compound was always going to be slim. 

This situation stands in contrast to the one faced by the militarised and murderous rebel mob who callously refused the surrender of a wounded and shaken 69-year-old armed only with a comically bling ‘golden pistol’ in a drain pipe in broad daylight.

Continue reading "Sloppy moral relativism in the wake of death" »

World leaders and of course, many Libyans, have celebrated the death of Colonel Gaddafi. Many suffered under his brutal regime. There is no doubt Gaddafi was a tyrant and the head of a government known for torture and mass killings of dissidents.

He was either complicit or directly aware of major human rights abuses happening under his rule. He also took power of a country without the mandate of his people. He was eccentric and unpredictable and many world leaders accepted him and treated him as their equal, yet none truly admired the man. His death was a cathartic moment for many. 

But even though he was a mass murderer and rightly despised, his death should not have been treated in the undignified manner that we saw again and again on our screens.

Continue reading "Dancing on graves is appalling, even if it’s Gaddafi" »

Nathan Edwards was the first Australian photographer at Ground Zero on September 11. He wrote this piece for The Punch when Osama bin Laden was killed.

For the past six months I’ve been sifting through hundreds of photographs that captured the anonymous heroes of September 11. I’ve spent countless hours tracking down those New York firefighters who put their lives on the line as the ten year anniversary looms.

But it wasn’t until the news that Bin Laden had been killed - a decade later - that I had flashbacks to the day that changed the world. I was the only Australian photographer at Ground Zero capturing the horror around me.

Continue reading "Osama’s death took me back to Ground Zero" »

There are many things I remember about 11 September 2001.

Like almost all New Yorkers on that day, I remember the crisp fresh air and the blue sky unbroken by clouds. I remember going to work, thinking about the busy day I had ahead of me.

For me, that day was just another day. Another day at work as a human rights activist.  And then the first plane streaked across New York’s crisp blue sky, flying too near, too low, too fast and too loud.

Continue reading "I was there when the planes hit the towers" »

Just for a minute, imagine if David Hicks was charismatic, brilliant, eloquent, and truly, truly remorseful. He came across as precisely none of those things on ABC TV’s David Hicks special on Australian Story last night. But if he had, would Australia forgive him?

We’ll never know. Because what we saw was an unconvincing charade. And some irrelevant shots of Hicks on a motorbike, his wife in soft focus, and his mate making a cup of tea.

The former Guantanamo Bay detainee, by blaming his childhood and talking about his way forward, seems to be seeking some sort of forgiveness. ‘Closure’, even.

Continue reading "David Hicks is a sinner, sinned against, but no martyr" »

The death of Al-Qaeda’s leader has sparked a fierce response that lacks an understanding of the real world. The world is not perfect and nobody should pretend that it is.

Nor is foreign policy black and white. It is a cocktail of aspirational idealism and hard fought realism but too often we forget this. The last few weeks have seen an army of armchair commentators purporting their often narrow and moralist interpretations of events as the only courses of action that would have been permissible. So let’s set the record straight on ten fundamental questions with some real world answers:

1. Could Bin Laden have been captured rather than killed?

No.

Continue reading "Everything you ever wanted to know about OBL’s death" »

What a strange mob we’ve become, we in the ‘Western world’. On holidays in Europe the past few weeks I found I myself with a few days to fill in and began to watch a bit too much Western TV coverage of the biggest story in roughly nine and a half years - the death of bin Laden.

It got me down more with each passing hour. If the USA and its President thought to earn the world’s gratitude and praise for this astonishing operation, they must have been scratching their heads.

Let’s see, the cave dwelling, messianic mass murderer and his animal cronies declared war on America (and the rest of us in the ‘West’  while they were at it).  They did it formally, with an announcement on TV - and a press release for all I know.

Continue reading "Osama a victim of aggression: you’re kidding, right?" »

I don’t care what you believe, what awful things you’ve seen to make you hate - if you think an aeroplane ploughing into a skyscraper full of civilians is a good thing there is something seriously wrong with you.

So what was wrong with Osama bin Laden?

Like Muhammad Atta, the pilot of the second plane to strike the World Trade Centre, bin Laden was an educated man from a privileged background.

Continue reading "Would you cheerfully kill anyone who hurt your child?" »

For nearly a decade, the question of what Osama bin Laden might look like ran a close second to where he might be located.

Do years of murderous terrorism escalate the hair greying process? Would he be with beard or without? And what are the dress regulations for 21st Century villainy? Semi-criminal or smart homicidal?

In the long years between the September 11 terrorist attacks and Operation Assassination, these were key questions faced by US authorities as they tried to keep the visuals on their wanted posters and card decks up to date.

Continue reading "Osama: a frail, pathetic poser" »

American special forces not only assassinated Osama bin Laden in their precision strike on Abbottabad. They also shot holes in Pakistan’s status as a credible and trustworthy ally in the fight against terrorism.

With the now-famous words “Geronimo EKIA”, the USA’s elite SEAL Team Six gave President Barack Obama the solution to a problem that had dogged the world’s major military power for close to a decade.

However, the success of the clandestine raid also handed Obama a new dilemma which may remain with the United States for an equally long period – the question of whether it can trust Pakistan as an ally in the fight against terrorism.

Continue reading "Pakistan has a long history of supporting terrorist groups" »

Amongst the rubble of the Abbotabad compound, US Forces discovered a diary which they have leaked to diaryleaks.com.au, after Julian Assange rejected it due to “quality” and “veracity” issues. Read on for selected excerpts.

3 February 2002
Have decided to keep diary to ensure world has record of important post 9/11 career.

October 2002
So far contribution to global jihad has mainly been hiding in caves. Somewhat out of touch with day-to-day Al Qaeda operations. Number 2 is running things from Yemen in my absence.

Continue reading "Journal of a washed up fundamentalist" »

Storming a building, in which latest reports suggest there were children, wounding a woman and shooting a man in the head is not your typical story of heroism espoused by the US Military. 

It all changes, however, when that man is Osama Bin Laden.

There are many theories about how heroes and villains are created. The majority of us are destined to work nine to five and will neither blow buildings up nor end world poverty.

Continue reading "Good guys are nothing without bad guys to destroy" »

Osama bin Laden isn’t dead. For all we know he’s lying low in Vegas, possibly with Elvis, or living at Ronald Biggs’ old place in Rio.

Even if they produced images of bin Laden’s body, there is every chance the photographs could have been doctored.

And even if they produced the body itself, there’s no way of being 100 per cent sure that it’s actually his corpse anyway.

Continue reading "Not everyone is celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s demise" »

Position Vacant. One (1) Villain. A unique, high-profile opportunity has arisen for the role of Chief Enemy of the West. Wide-ranging experience in terrorism, mass murder and threats of worldwide destruction essential. Applicants must look evil (long beard and walking cane preferable). Extensive travel required.

The full story is still unfolding, but what is clear is that almost 10 years after the September 11 attacks, the US finally has their man. Their pursuit of Osama bin Laden has been relentless, as well it should have been: The man admitted to plotting the murder of over 2,500 people.

But the victory is a double-edged sword for the American government and its allies. In killing bin Laden, they have brought a murderer to justice, but they have also lost their poster boy for the ‘war on terror’.

Continue reading "Uh oh, we’re gonna need a new Chief Enemy of the West" »

In yet another extraordinary exclusive, The Punch has obtained a transcript of the last minutes of Osama bin Laden, his wife Amal and courier Abu in his Pakistani compound…

AMAL: (Sigh…) Well I guess it’s another night in.

OSAMA: What’s that supposed to mean?

Continue reading "EXCLUSIVE: The bin Laden tapes" »

When announcing Osama bin Laden’s death, US President Barack Obama declared it was about “liberty and justice for all”.  The Punch asked RMIT’s Adjunct Professor Peter Norden, a law, crime and justice expert, what that means.

What was your immediate response to the announcement of bin Laden’s death?
Certainly a sense of surprise that it happened without warning.  But then I reacted to the words used by the US President and Australian Prime Minister that “justice had been done”. My understanding of justice being done is when an accused person is taken into custody, tried and receives the verdict of the court. 

Continue reading "Punch Q & A: Just what is justice?" »

Welcome to this week’s ‘I Call Bullshit’, a weekly look at the strange twists and turns of the human mind. 

It’s not surprising at all that conspiracy theories have shrouded Osama bin Laden’s death. Before the dust had settled from September 11 crackpot ideas started surfacing, the most persistent of which is that it was an ‘inside job’ carried out to trigger the war on terror. People love to doubt the official line.

And it took mere cyber seconds – in this crazy interweb-connected world of ours – for people to start speculating that Osama was not dead at all, the whole extravaganza just concocted to boost Obama’s election chances. Or an alien plot. Or something.

Continue reading "ICB: Bin Laden is alive and well and living in Graceland" »

Was it a hit squad? The Americans’ codename for Osama Bin Laden was Geronimo. Geronimo was the Apache leader who was pursued, captured, became a sideshow attraction and lived out his days on a reservation.

No one wanted bin Laden to become a sideshow. The White House says that they would have captured bin Laden if they could, but that he offered resistance.

Of a choice between capture or kill, kill was always preferable.

Continue reading "Bin Laden: From hide and seek to show and tell" »

The death of Osama Bin Laden will make no difference to global terrorism inspired by Islamic fundamentalism, and it will have scant impact on the war in Afghanistan. 

But the way that the US killed Osama Bin Laden needs recognition; it was the sort of precise, human intelligence-driven operation that must be employed ruthlessly in Afghanistan to capture or kill insurgent leaders as we enter another fighting season.

Al-Qaida has not been about Osama bin Laden for quite some time and the Taliban in Afghanistan have not received support from al-Qaida or Osama Bin Laden since the end of initial operations in 2001.  The global Islamic terrorist movement is now a leaderless jihad and is more likely to come from a young IT whiz-kid in his bedroom in one of our leafy suburbs than from an old man hiding in the mountains of the AfPak border. 

Continue reading "Terror: Coming to a leafy suburb near you" »

The world is justifiably relieved that Osama bin Laden is dead. But there’s this niggling little feeling that the whole operation was a little bit too… American.

The US as judge, jury and executioner. A daring and dramatic feat, and our brave heroes, kill the bad (really bad) guy. The President declares the victory and the crowds take to the streets chanting “USA. USA. USA.”.

Update: Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot and killed, although the Whitehouse says there was a “volatile firefight” underway. All the latest at news.com.au.

Continue reading "Team America: Shock and awe over hearts and minds" »

Now that Osama sleeps with the fishes, the world inevitably turns its attention to what comes next. We’ll tell you what comes next. The jokes, that’s what. In fact, they’re already here.

We’re not dancing on anyone’s grave. We’re just faithfully reporting, in the old impartial style of reporters of yesteryear, the great mirth outbreak around the world in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s very timely demise.

Normally, there’s a cycle with this kind of stuff. It goes: death, shock, respectful pause, joke outbreak. Not this time. Yesterday it was more like: “hey, shame they had to kill Osama. A much better punishment would have been to capture him alive and make him go through airport security for the rest of his life!” Boom, tish!

Continue reading "Rifling through a bin laden with comic gold" »

There is probably no other person in history who altered human behaviour and undermined our presumed freedoms and collective quality of life on the same scale as Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden easily ranks among the greatest evil-doers of the modern era, alongside Hitler and Stalin – not in terms of the death toll from his deeds but the pernicious ripple effect of his actions throughout the world.

The genius of the organisation he formed is that it functions along a simple franchise model whereby any disaffected and fanatical group, in any corner of the planet, can hang out its shingle and operate as a terrorist cell under the al Qaeda brand. In this small globalised world, the effects of his actions were immediate.

Continue reading "The deserved demise of the man who changed us all" »

The ‘world’s most wanted man’, Osama bin Laden is dead. For all the latest news, see www.news.com.au. For an analysis of what it means, here is what Matthew Gray, ANU expert in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, had to say.

This is a symbolic victory, and there’s considerable satisfaction for those who wanted revenge. I’m not sure it’ll have that much operational or strategic impact on Al Qaeda, though.

Osama was not, as far as I can tell, doing much direct operational work or strategic stuff beyond setting vague directions as to where the Al Qaeda ‘brand name’ might go from here – Al Qaeda is now a set of like-minded groups in different parts of the world.

Continue reading "Bin Laden: Some questions answered, many remain" »

US president Barack Obama has just announced officially the news currently flashing around the world, which is that Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Bin Laden was hunted down and killed by US operatives, in a mission which followed a tip-off last August. The strike on Bin occurred in Abbottabad, in northern Pakistan. Members of his family are also believed to have been killed. There were no US casualties in the firefight. It is not known whether any civilians were harmed.

The architect of 9/11 and numerous other terrorist atrocities, Bin Laden has been wanted dead or alive by the US for almost a decade now. The immediate question now is whether the global jihadist movement will be diminished or indeed possibly strengthened by his death.

Continue reading "Osama is dead. What next?" »