Bin Laden and Pancho Villa

Published : 4 May 2011, 12:17 PM
Updated : 4 May 2011, 12:17 PM

We Americans have relatively short memories, history-wise. Monday morning, I awoke to the report that American Navy Seals had taken out Osama Bin Laden, the bad seed of the billionaire Saudi family. After the kids left for school, we went out to the diner for our Monday morning breakfast.

The diner we frequent is three blocks from the house. It was originally called "Three Flags", because it features Portuguese, American and Mexican cuisine. The real attraction is the Mexican food, so the décor reflects the principal selling point of the establishment. As you enter the diner, to the left is a newspaper dispenser. The headlines covered the entire front sheet of the Asbury Park Press:  Bin Laden is Dead.

Upon entering the diner, I noticed the old-timers, the throng of unemployed, treating themselves to the 2.99 special of coffee, home fried potatoes and scrambled egg with toast. But what struck me this time as  I entered the diner was a poster which has survived the several changes of ownership: A replica of a century-old poster lionising Pancho Villa in a huge sombrero, sporting a large moustache, wearing bandolier gun belts and mounted on a white horse.

The subject of conversation among patrons that morning was more about fishing than international politics or the ramifications of Bin Laden's demise. While the world reacted, life went on in our riverside town. I wondered how many people who sat under the vintage poster of the famous Mexican knew that Pancho Villa was the last person to lead an army onto US soil, in 1916, killing innocent people and setting fire to two American towns, one in New Mexico and one in Texas.

The then-US President, a weak incompetent man named Woodrow Wilson ordered troops into Mexico. Villa hid in the mountains in unmapped terrain. The US countered with technology. One of the first US military applications of the airplane was employed to track down Villa. An infrastructure with telegraph technology was set up in Mexico, and the US spent a great deal of money to track Villa down. In the end, though they killed Villa's high-ranking officers, by 1920, Villa had not been captured. He was eventually assassinated by his own people at a large, opulent estate financed by the Mexican government, our supposed allies.

The War on Terror has lost its poster child. That night, jubilant crowds in Washington and New York held midnight parties.

President Obama's credibility has spiked. Even his bitter foes, tea-party Republicans commented that this capture was beyond politics, and that the President had to be given credit for his efficiency, secrecy, and decisiveness. His bitter foes declared that he "looked Presidential."

Others began to ask important questions. These questions are relevant because they may shape the future of American diplomatic and military operations. The most important lesson we can learn from the capture of Bin Laden is that military forces should never be compromised for diplomatic purposes. The type of unilateral extraction operation which finally exterminated the enemy was not the random bombing of positions by drones.

It was a precise Hollywood-type operation executed by a team of highly competent individuals at close range, conducted completely behind the back of the host government. The word on the street here is that Pakistan was playing both sides against the middle. We could not trust our ally. In the end, Pakistan's motivations are deeply suspicious, and if you're hoping to endear yourself to the American people, you don't want to be Pakistan right now. The popular view is that Pakistan must have been aware of Bin Laden's presence, and that we should choose our friends more carefully.

As terrorist elements throughout the world condemn this act of justice, forces like the Taliban may have benefited from Sunday night's action. One commentator compared the loss of Bin Laden to al-Qaeda with the loss of Colonel Sanders to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bin Laden is now just a poster on a wall. Now that he is gone, our objective in Afghanistan are murkier, and most Americans believe that we have accomplished our mission. Even here on the street, everyone is saying, "Well, we won. Now our soldiers can come home."

Even the Navy Seals may have made their feelings known in the way they dispatched Bin Laden. He was killed with a shot to the left eye. At close range, especially against a target as tall as Bin Laden, it is possible that a well-trained team can pick its shot. If this is the case, then the message is clear: An eye for an eye. Justice has been done.  Mission accomplished.

The American people want a new policy where smaller armed forces with the latest technology lay the groundwork for precision assaults on individual bad guys. This approach is the exact antithesis of terrorism, where little or no collateral damage occurs (or is ignored) and only the main culprits are targeted. Again, the question on the street is, "Why doesn't every soldier get Navy Seal training? Why kill a soldier when we can kill a leader?"

I totally believe in this policy. We should recognise that we may become unpopular with our more cautious allies. The main focus of a military operation is efficiency and success. Especially in this world of secrecy and the need for quick action, we should not be so concerned about building nominal coalitions, which compromise secrecy, delay success. We should never conduct diplomacy through military operations.

We are constantly involved in war because Americans are wonderful soldiers and terrible diplomats. I listened to the commentary by Zbignew Brzezinski, who rightly stated that we must be more measured and thoughtful in our approach to the Islamic world. Our diplomats can issue statements and veiled warnings about the removal of Yunus without consequence.

Yet, where is our Constitutional outrage at the banning of Burqa in France? Where are the veiled (pardon the pun) warnings against religious oppression when it happens in Europe? Why do we fail to decry the death of innocent Palestinians? How can we expect the Muslim world to take us seriously when we fail to defend the ideals we stand for when those violations occur in "developed" countries, and are blatant acts of racism disguised as security measures? What sort of condemnation did the US issue when Switzerland banned minarets?

George Washington was right on so many issues. He instructed his men to target officers and be lenient on enlisted men. This created sympathy among the ranks of British soldiers and was proof positive that Americans valued the lives of those innocent pawns, while they held the officers responsible. This was warfare informed by American ideals. George Washington banned the torture of prisoners, even as the British brutally tortured the Patriots.

Much has been made of the fact that information leading to the death of Bin Laden was elicited through torture. The fact that officials are saying this worries me. It sends a message that the US hopes to continue to justify torture as an effective means of extracting information. It may work, but it doesn't work as well as treating prisoners according to our own ideals. No victim of torture was ever swayed to turn coat. Yet, we have converted the sceptic many times by holding fast to our ideals. Perhaps if we had pursued George Washington's policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it wouldn't have taken nine years and nine months to bring a murderer to justice.

Americans won their revolution by disobeying the established rules of war, by going rogue. When our diplomatic efforts fail, we should not be afraid to go rogue once more. Why do we claim that we are not targeting Gaddafi in Lybia, for instance? What message does that send to any of Gaddafi's soldiers who are sitting on the fence? Does it give them warm fuzzy feelings about the US that we are aiming for them and not their insane leader? First of all, it is disingenuous: We clearly are targeting Gaddafi. By failing to declare him as the target, we are reducing our chances of converting the military to will of the people, and forcing them to dig in.

Once we leave Afghanistan, once Gaddafi is out of power, once the dust settles on the Jasmine Revolution, the United States must accept the same democratic standards and condemn its antithesis wherever it occurs. We must especially hold our allies to this standard. We must support the right of all nations to disagree with us. We must be protectors of the right of the people to bear arms even when they oppose a dictator who happens to be our friend. We must stand up for the right of the people to assemble, even when that assembly frightens us. We must be outspoken advocates for the practice of religious freedom even when the religion isn't Christianity. We must promote worldwide freedom of press without censorship, even when the writing criticises the US. We must stand for the right of governments to revenues through taxation, even when it is US business interests that are compelled to pay taxes.

We must be especially careful to protect these rights as monarchy dies in the Middle East, and understand the plight of the desperate poor, who once felt that their only hope of justice was martyrdom at the banner of al-Qaeda. We must appreciate reason for Bin Laden's rise. He was a member of a ruling family who used the cry for justice to provide a safety valve against democratic movements in Saudi Arabia. By exporting terrorism, and turning hatred outward, he protected the ruling elite at home. He used the promise of martyrdom the same way the caste system used the promise of reincarnation to keep the masses from claiming what was rightfully theirs while the ruling class held power.

In the end, he was caught, living in the manner to which he was accustomed, in a multimillion dollar estate. Al-Qaeda turned out to be just another franchise to protect wealth. Just like the commentator said. Kentucky Fried Chicken has lost the Colonel.

A hundred years from now, 50 or 20 even, many Americans will have no idea who Bin Laden was, just as so many children today cannot tell me who Ayatollah Khomeni was. His face may grace a rogue's gallery in some American diner, and life will go on. People will continue to talk more about fishing than about international politics. But maybe things will have changed just enough. Twenty years from now, George Bush's name may not even be an answer on a high school history exam, but I am pretty sure we will still remember the name the good president named, George Washington. I hope that by then, if we are engaged in warfare (any guesses? China, perhaps?), we will have gained the confidence of our allies and the respect of our enemies by holding true to principles on a universal level that we hold to be self-evident here at home.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", is scheduled to be released by Findhorn Press in May of 2011.