Where's Osama?

Good question. We've been hearing this query from the derisive left mostly, in a kind of semi-taunt at the Bush Administration, which supposedly "dropped the ball" at Tora Bora. (This taunt, by the way, is an intrinsic, if unintended, insult to our military brass and specifically to Delta Force, the most elite fighting force in the United States Military. But they're for the troops!) I've been saying for at least a year that Osama is, in all likelihood, dead. I might or might not have been wrong a year ago, but I did have good reason to think that OBL no longer walked amongst the living. For one thing, people like Osama are megalomaniacs: they love the sound of their own voice, they glory in the power they possess to move people to self-destructive acts, they take delight in their potency. But we haven't seen OBL for some time. Sure we've gotten some audio-tapes of him, but what happened to all those videos of him pontificating, clothed in a combined contume of drab military garb and Islamic head-dress, with automatic weapon to his side, haughtily taunting us western decadent types? I haven't seen a new video of OBL in at least two and a half years, which leads me to believe a few things. Either he is:

a.) Dead
b.) Critically injured or deformed by combat
c.) Deathly ill
d.) Laying low

Let's take choice d.) for starters. If OBL is "laying low", what good does that do for the morale of al Qaeda, or the wider jihad movement? The answer is...it doesn't. I fail to see how morale could be high in the jihadist movement or al Qaeda when the spiritual leader either can't or won't stick his head out of the caves just to say "hi!", even if it is on video. Ayman al-Zawahiri clearly is still alive...he's been communicating with Zarqawi in Iraq (we've intercepted his communications), and has made videos as well as audiotapes. He's still out there "selling" the jihad. But nothing of OBL. Something is afoot.

Peter Brookes, sometime NY Post columnist and a representative of the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote about this in his column today. The indispensable Michael Ledeen, who has massive contacts within Iran, has also written about this, claiming that his Iranian contacts have told him that OBL died this past December of kidney failure. Might or might not be true, but I'd say the reasons for his absence are closer to the first three choices I posted above, and probably less about the last. In times of war, many in America, particularly on the left, lose their nerve easily and assume that the enemy (whoever that enemy may be) is superhuman, super-durable, and is immune to our ferocious barrages. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our enemies, like us, are human, subject to the same fears of injury and death, and I don't think the incessant incantations of "Allahu Akbar!" change that. (This is why I take great issue with the leftist contention that we've created "a million bin Ladens". For one, there's no way to quantify this, and two, I seriously doubt that potential young jihadists would find it greatly motivational when their older brothers or fathers come home from the jihad maimed or in a pine box. If anything, I think the opposite is true. They may be more radicalized, but they're not apt to take up arms when the prospect of their young lives ending within a month is a genuine inevitability.) So I don't think that OBL has walked away from his former headquarters in Afghanistan unscathed; I think he's at best "on the run", never sleeping in the same bed twice, and cut off from the world. At worst (for him, that is), he's disfigured (and is thus no longer "camera friendly"), or he's dead. If it is the latter, and the rumors are true that he died of kidney failure, it would be a case of the "law of unintended consequences" once again rearing its head. It would be fine by me. His inability to get proper medical treatment was probably the result of being on the run in places with little to no modern medical technology. Either way, dead is dead. And in OBL's case, dead is good.

In conclusion, I think it would be greatly in the interests of the United States and our allies in the war on Islamo-terrorists to make a big campaign to have OBL show himself to the world, if only on video. Let's demand "proof of life". Let's see if the "great man", the "strong horse" is still running the show, is in good health, and is operational. Bush and/or prominent members of his administration should make a point of mentioning that OBL is nowhere to be found, and that it is doubtful he is fully functional, if not alive. Force the hand of the jihadists. If OBL is alive, he'll come out of his lair and declare so. If he's not, it would be a big blow to the jihadist movement and a coup for the forces of civilization. Either way, we win.