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A Long Time Going
Peter Bergen
Osama bin Laden long fancied himself something of a poet.His compositions tended to the morbid, and a poem written two years after 9/11 in which he contemplated the circumstances of his death was no exception.Bin Laden wrote, “Let my grave be an eagle’s belly, its resting place in the sky’s atmosphere amongst perched eagles.”
As it turns out, bin Laden’s grave is somewhere at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, to which his body was consigned after his death in Pakistan at the hands of U.S.Navy SEALs.If there is poetry in bin Laden’s end, it is the poetry of justice, and it calls to mind what President George W.Bush had predicted would happen in a speech he gave to Congre just nine days after 9/11.In an uncharacteristic burst of eloquence, Bush aerted that bin Laden and al-Qaeda would eventually be consigned to “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
Though bin Laden’s body may have been buried at sea on May 2, the burial of bin Ladenism has been a decade in the making.Indeed, it began on the very day of bin Laden’s greatest triumph.At first glance, the 9/11 aault looked like a stunning win for al-Qaeda, a ragtag band of jihadists who had bloodied the nose of the world’s only superpower.But on closer look it became something far le significant, because the attacks on Washington and New York City did not achieve bin Laden’s key strategic goal: the withdrawal of the U.S.from the Middle East, which he imagined would lead to the collapse of all the American-backed authoritarian regimes in the region.Instead, the opposite happened: the U.S.invaded and occupied first Afghanistan and then Iraq.By attacking the American mainland and inviting reprisal, al-Qaeda — which means “the base” in Arabic — lost the best base it had ever had: Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.In this sense, 9/11 was similar to another surprise attack, that on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec.7, 1941, a stunning tactical victory that set in motion events that would end in the defeat of imperial Japan.Shrewder members of bin Laden’s inner circle had warned him before 9/11 that antagonizing the U.S.would be counterproductive, and internal al-Qaeda memos written after the fall of the Taliban and later recovered by the U.S.military show that some of bin Laden’s followers fully understood the folly of the attacks.In 2002 an al-Qaeda insider wrote to another, saying, “Regrettably, my brother...during just six months, we lost what we built in years.”
The responsibility for that act of hubris lies squarely with bin Laden: despite his reputation for shyne and diffidence, he ran al-Qaeda as a dictatorship.His son Omar recalls that the men who worked for his father had a habit of requesting permiion before they spoke with their leader, saying, “Dear prince, may I speak?” Joining al-Qaeda meant taking a personal religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden, just as joining the Nazi Party had required swearing personal fealty to the Führer.So bin Laden’s group became just as much a hostage to its leader’s flawed strategic vision as the Nazis were to Hitler’s.The key to understanding this vision and all of bin Laden’s actions was his utter conviction that he was an instrument of God’s will.In short, he was a religious zealot.That zealotry first revealed itself when he was a teenager.Khaled Batarfi, a soccer-playing buddy of bin Laden’s on the streets of Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where they both grew up, remembers his solemn friend praying seven times a day(two more than mandated by Islamic convention)and fasting twice a week in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad.For entertainment, bin Laden would aemble a group of friends at his house to chant songs about the liberation of Palestine.Bin Laden’s religious zeal was colored by the fact that his family had made its vast fortune as the principal contractor renovating the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, which gave him a direct connection to Islam’s holiest places.In his early 20s, bin Laden worked in the family busine;he was a priggish young man who was also studying economics at a university.His destiny would change with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979.The Afghan war prompted the billionaire’s son to launch an ambitious plan to confront the Soviets with a small group of Arabs under his command.That group eventually provided the nucleus of al-Qaeda, which bin Laden founded in 1988 as the war against the Soviets began to wind down.The purpose of al-Qaeda was to take jihad to other parts of the globe and eventually to the U.S., the nation he believed was leading a Western conspiracy to destroy true Islam.In the 1990s bin Laden would often describe America as “the head of the snake.”
Jamal Khalifa, his best friend at the university in Jidda and later also his brother-in-law, told me bin Laden was driven not only by a desire to implement what he saw as God’s will but also by a fear of divine punishment if he failed to do so.So not defending Islam from what he came to believe was its most important enemy would be disobeying God, something he would never do.In 1997, when I was a producer for CNN, I met with bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan to film his first television interview.He struck me as intelligent and well informed, someone who comported himself more like a cleric than like the revolutionary he was quickly becoming.His followers treated bin Laden with great deference, referring to him as “the sheik,” and hung on his every pronouncement.During the course of that interview, bin Laden laid out his rationale for his plan to attack the U.S., whose support for Israel and the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt made it, in his mind, the enemy of Islam.Bin Laden also explained that the U.S.was as weak as the Soviet Union had been, and he cited the American withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1970s as evidence for this view.He poured scorn on the notion that the U.S.thought of itself as a superpower “even after all these succeive defeats.”
That would turn out to be a dangerous delusion, which would culminate in bin Laden’s death at the hands of the same U.S.soldiers he had long disparaged as weaklings.Now that he is gone, there will inevitably be some jockeying to succeed him.A U.S.counterterrorism official told me that there was “no succeion plan in place” to replace bin Laden.While the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri had long been his deputy, he is not the natural, charismatic leader that bin Laden was.U.S.officials believe that al-Zawahiri is not popular with his colleagues, and they hope there will be disharmony and discord as the militants sort out the succeion.As they do so, the jihadists will be mindful that their world has paed them by.The al-Qaeda leadership, its foot soldiers and its ideology played no role in the series of protests and revolts that have rolled acro the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt and then on to Bahrain, Yemen and Libya.Bin Laden must have watched these events unfold with a mixture of excitement and deep worry.Overthrowing the dictatorships and monarchies of the Middle East was long his central goal, but the Arab revolutions were not the kind he had envisioned.Protesters in the streets of Tunis and Cairo didn’t carry placards with pictures of bin Laden’s face, and the Facebook revolutionaries who launched the uprisings represent everything al-Qaeda hates: they are secular, liberal and antiauthoritarian, and their ranks include women.The eventual outcome of these revolts will not be to al-Qaeda’s satisfaction either, because almost no one in the streets of Egypt, Libya or Yemen is clamoring for the imposition of a Taliban-style theocracy, al-Qaeda’s preferred end for the states in the region.Between the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden, it is hard to imagine greater blows to al-Qaeda’s ideology and organization.President Obama has characterized al-Qaeda and its affiliates as “small men on the wrong side of history.” For al-Qaeda, that history just sped up, as bin Laden’s body floated down into the ocean deeps and its proper place in the unmarked grave of discarded lies.恐 怖 逝 去
彼得于卑尔根
奥萨马·本·拉登一直以来都把自己幻想成某位诗人或者什么的。他的作品常趋向于病态恐怖，他有一首诗作于“9.11事件”两年后，这首诗毫无例外的预计了他死亡时的情形。本拉登写道“让我葬身于鹰腹，它休憩在栖息于苍穹的鹰群中。”
恰好，本拉登的坟墓是在阿拉伯海底的某个地方，他的尸体是在他死于巴基斯坦后在美国海豹突击队的一手操作下移交到这里来的。如果说本拉登的死真有些诗意的话，那就是审判的诗意，它让人回想起正如总统乔治布什在9.11事件发生后的第九天在给国会的一个演讲中所做的预测到的一样。布什宣称本拉登和基地组织将最终会交付于“历史中充满废弃谎言的裸露之墓。”这句话在一场并不惊艳的演讲中爆发出来。
虽然本拉登的尸体会在5月2日被葬于大海，但是本拉登的葬礼在十年前就已经在形成中了。的确，它就在本拉登满载最伟大胜利的这一天就开始了。乍一看9.11恐怖袭击对于基地组织就像一个令人振聋发聩的胜利——一帮圣战分子组成的乌合之众在超级大国的鼻子上制造血案。但是仔细看你就会发现它变的毫无意义。因为这次对于华盛顿和纽约的袭击并未达到本拉登的战略目标：美国从中东撤军，他原本以为恐怖袭击会导致有背的美国独裁主义政权会在该区域瓦解。
相反发生的是：美国先后入侵并攻占了阿富汗和伊拉克。凭借着袭击美国本土和一些邀请报复，“基地组织”——象征着阿拉伯的基石失去了他们曾经拥有过最好的基石——塔利班控制下的阿富汗。在这种意义上，9.11与另一场令人震惊的袭击有几分相像，那就是1941年12月7日早晨发生于珍珠港的那场令人震惊的有预谋的偷袭，这
场偷袭开始调动起了以战胜日本帝国主义为最终目标的活动。
本拉登核心集团的一些精明的成员在9.11事件前警告过他与美国对抗并不会达到预期的目标，内部基地组织的备忘录在塔利班坠落后来被美军重新恢复后显示：本拉登的随从完全明白这场袭击有多么的愚蠢。2002年基地组织的一个内部成员写信给另外一个成员写到“真可悲，我的兄弟„„仅仅6个月我们就失去了几年才建成的东西。”
狂妄行为的责任直接指向本拉登：尽管他一直以害羞和不自信被人所了解，但是他却把经营基地组织作为一个独裁特权。据本拉登的儿子奥马尔回忆说为他父亲工作的人都有一个习惯——在跟领导讲话前先要请求许可：“尊敬的陛下我能讲话吗？”加入“基地”组织就意味着要对个人宗教宣誓效忠于拉登，就像加入纳粹党必须亲自发誓效忠于元首一样。所以本拉登集团仅仅成为最多像纳粹党对于希特勒一样：人质相对于有缺陷战略眼光的领导人。
理解这种眼光和本拉登所有行动的关键是他完全相信他就是上帝意志的产物。简单来说，他就是一个宗教狂热者。那种狂热第一次呈现出是在他还是个少年的时候。卡勒德巴特菲是本拉登的一个足球伙伴，他是沙特阿拉伯吉达一个无家可归的孩子，在这里他们一起长大。他回想起他那位严肃的朋友一天要祷告7次（比穆斯林大会规定的还多2次）并且他效仿穆罕默德一周斋戒两次。他会在自己家里集合一帮朋友高唱解放巴勒斯坦的歌曲作为娱乐。
本拉登的家族耗费巨资成为修建麦加和麦地那地区圣地的总承包商，这件事让本拉登的宗教热情着上了色彩，这也给他了一个朝拜伊
斯兰教最神圣地方的直接连接。在他20岁刚出头时，本拉登曾在做家族生意；他是一个自负的年轻人，也曾在大学里读过经济学。
在1979年末苏联入侵阿富汗，他的命运从此发生了改变。阿富汗战争激起了这位亿万富翁之子的野心，他和一小群在他指挥下的阿拉伯人发动一个对抗苏联的雄心计划。集团的核心最终提供给基地组织——拉登于1988年成立对抗苏联军事力量开始平静下来。基地组织的目的是把圣战带到世界的其它地方并最终带到美国这个他认为是领导一场毁灭真实伊斯兰教的西方阴谋国家。在90年代拉登经常把美国形容成“毒蛇的头部”。
贾马尔·哈里发，拉登在大学最好的朋友后来成为拉登的妹夫，他告诉我拉登不仅是被想要实现上帝意志的欲望驱使着，而且被一种恐惧的狂暴状态驱使着——如果圣战失败的话。所以在他来相信，如果不捍卫伊斯兰教就等同于伊斯兰教最重要的敌人违背神一样，而这是他永远都不会干的事。
1997年当时我是CNN的一位制片人，在做拉登的第一次电视访谈节目时在东阿富汗遇到他。他的见多识广和聪明才智着实让我惊讶，举手投足间比起他正在迅速成为的革命者更像一位传教士。他的随从们以最崇高的敬意侍奉着拉登，提及到他就像酋长一样并且坚持贯彻拉登的每一个宣言。
在那次访谈当中，拉登列举了他计划袭击美国的理由：美国对以色列的支持和美国在沙特阿拉伯及埃及的政权，在他心里，美国就是伊斯兰教的敌人。拉登同时也阐述说美国就像以前苏联那样懦弱一
样，他引用1970年代美国撤出越南作为证据支持这一观点。他对美国认为自己是个超级大国这一观点表示蔑视——“即时在经历一连续失败后”。
那些理由被证明是一种危险的妄想，这种幻想最终以拉登之死而告终，他恰好死于那些曾被他长期蔑视为懦夫的美国士兵手里。既然他已经死了，将不可避免地就会有一些阴谋来接替他。一位美国反恐官员告诉我的是根本没有什么继承计划来接替拉登。埃及的扎瓦希里曾一直是他的副手，而他并不是一位像拉登一样天生的具有领袖气质的领导。据美国官员们推测扎瓦希里在同僚当中并不受欢迎，他们希望会有不和谐和不一致的因素会在激进分子挑选继承权时出现。
对于他们所做的这些，圣战份子对这个曾忽视过他们的世界会更加警觉。驶过中东及北非,从突尼斯到埃及,然后到巴林、也门和利比亚的一系列抗议和反抗活动中，士兵们跟领导阶层的思想意识并没有参与其中。本拉登看到这些事件时一定既喜又忧。推翻中东的独裁专政一直是他的一个中心目标，但是阿拉伯革命并不是他曾想像的那样。突尼斯以及开罗大街上的抗议份子们并没有高举贴有本拉登头像的牌子，并且Facebook上的革命份子也发动起义，代表基地组织所痛恨的一切——他们是不朽的反独裁主义主义者，是自由主义者，他们的队伍里甚至还有女人。这些叛乱的最终结果也未能使基地组织满意，因为大街上几乎没人呼吁接受一种塔利班模式的神权政体——基地组织希望这一地区的国家最终都会接受的神权政体。
阿拉伯春季本拉登的死，很难想像会给基地组织的思想跟组织带
来多大的打击。奥巴马总统认为基地组织跟它的子机构只不过是有些特点的“站在历史错误边上的小人”。对于基地组织，那段历史正在飞快流逝，就像本拉登的尸体飘落进大洋深处某一处充满废弃谎言的裸露之墓一样。
