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The War on Terror Should Be Retired

by Courtesy

Author Peter Bergen on Bin Laden’s Death
‘The War on Terror Should Be Retired’
By Gregor Peter Schmitz

US author and security expert Peter Bergen, 48, discusses this week’s killing of Osama bin Laden and why it is time to end the US-led war on terror. The al-Qaida leader’s death, he argues, is likely to fuel a debate in Congress over the Afghanistan deployment and future aid for Pakistan.

SPIEGEL: After President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, you declared the end of the war on terror. Isn’t that premature?

Bergen : It is hard to think of two events that would more suggest that the war on terrorism should be retired as a kind of operating concept. One is the Arab Spring which undercuts al-Qaida’s ideology, and the second is the death of bin Laden, which undercuts al-Qaida as an organization. There will never be a Treaty of Versailles with al-Qaida — and, in the absence of that, these two events suggest that it is time to move on. The world and the United States have other issues to contend with, like climate change, China and globalization.

SPIEGEL: So you don’t think there is anyone within al-Qaida who could be lined up to replace bin Laden?

Bergen : There will be replacements, but it would be as if Hermann Göring had replaced Adolf Hitler. There are a lot of differences between bin Laden and Hitler, but the one similarity is that when you joined elite Nazi organizations, you pledged a personal allegiance to Hitler, not to Nazism. When you join al-Qaida, you pledge a personal allegiance to bin Laden. That is also true of the affiliates of al-Qaida. Without bin Laden in the picture, it is hard to imagine that Ayman al-Zawahari, or any of the others that we know, would command the same loyalty.

SPIEGEL: Why has it been so difficult to track down bin Laden?

Bergen : It took 15 years after the Holocaust for the Israelis to find Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the extermination of the Jews, but not for a lack of trying. They put a lot of resources into that search.

SPIEGEL: But the Americans have access to better technology. Could the world’s best-outfitted intelligence service really be unable to find a fleeing man with kidney trouble for almost 10 years?

Bergen : Bin Laden was off the grid, not communicating electronically. It actually made him harder to track down because the United States is so reliant on signals intelligence. …more