Why Obama Silenced bin Laden
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen
Ford
“Bin Laden had to die so that al Qaida could live to
fight another day for U.S. imperialism in Libya and
Syria.”
Five years ago, this week, U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin
Laden, in a fully wired, real-time assassination that was observed,
half a world away by President Obama and much of his entourage. It
was as if the high commission of the Mafia had gathered to watch
the silencing of a witness who might testify to what the whole gang
had been up to all these years. The SEALS that carried out the hit,
supposedly the most disciplined troops in the U.S. military, made
no effort whatsoever to capture bin Laden. Instead, they shot him
on sight in the head and then raked his body with at least one
hundreds bullets.
Bin Laden wasn’t going to do any talking to anybody; that was
the purpose of the mission. The United States government had no
interest in learning the real history or capabilities of al Qaida;
they already knew every detail. They had been there, with bin
Laden, from the very beginning, back in Afghanistan in the late
Seventies and early Eighties, when the U.S., Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan created the world’s first international Islamic jihadist
network, with bin Laden at the center. The U.S. and its allies have
been manipulating that network like attack dogs, ever since,
siccing them on their enemies with one hand and then pretending to
wage never ending war against the jihadists, with the other. It’s
been one hell of a scam.
A Symbolic Decapitation, to Deflect Attention from a
Huge Mobilization
There was an urgent need to take out bin Laden in May of 2011.
The United States and its European and royal Arab allies were in
the midst of another Shock and Awe offensive to bring down the
secular governments of Libya and Syria, and they needed all the
jihadist foot soldiers they could get. The trick was to pretend
that the jihadists in Libya and Syria were really just
freedom-loving political dissidents and patriotic “moderates” who
were oppressed by their governments and, therefore, deserving of
U.S. arms, financing, and air support. To pull that one off,
Washington had to create the impression that al Qaida, the
international jihadist network, had been drastically weakened and
marginalized, so that Westerners would not be terrified watching
Islamic fighters on television running around cutting off heads and
shouting “God is Great.” Al Qaida had to be symbolically
decapitated, through the killing of bin Laden, so that the U.S.
could trick its own citizens, if not the world, into believing that
the Arab fighters that Washington was backing were the good guys,
even though they behaved just like al Qaida.
In short, bin Laden had to die so that al Qaida could live to
fight another day for U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. The U.S.
is still arming and protecting al Qaida, whose Syrian affiliate, al
Nusra, is the main force holding the so-called “rebel” lines in
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. The U.S. would be protecting the al
Qaida off-shoot ISIS, as well, if ISIS had not decided to fight its
own war, for its own reasons. Even so, the U.S. did not mount
serious attacks against ISIS in Syria until the Russians
intervened, which showed the whole world that Washington had been
collaborating with the terrorists, all along – something that we
might have learned of in great detail, if Osama bin Laden had been
captured and put on trial.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to
BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.