The Tragedy of Osama bin Laden

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I awoke this morning to the news that Osama bin Laden, the figurehead and initial organizer of the al Quaeda movement which has spawned many acts of terror around the globe, had been killed by United States forces including Navy SEALS and CIA operatives. This was no surprise, as eventually Osama was going to be discovered. It was merely a matter of when. Perhaps the reaction in many parts of the United States should not have been a surprise either, but it was still disheartening.

I am not a supporter of al Queada nor a fan of bin Laden. Sadly, the end of his life was to a great extent the result of his own choices. Yet these choices don't exist in a vacuum. They are shaped and limited by a historical and social context. We can always ask, "If such and such a government had made this choice instead in the 1940s..." or "If this hadn't happened in the 1970s....", would the context in which people like bin Laden had made their own choices been different? Would other options have been possible or more favorable? This does not excuse the personal choices people make, but we must neither over- nor underestimate agency. People are not automatons at the mercy of history and socialization, but neither are they uninhibited agents who are completely free of the circumstances of their lives.

In an alternate history not much different than our own, could bin Laden have been in a better position to use his influence to foster peace and global unity? Might he have been more inclined to choose such a path? He, and you and I, however, must make our choices in the world as it is, not in the world as it might have been. More importantly, we also must choose the world we want to see and make our choices to reflect the world as it could be. One tragedy we face is that the collective choices of the past created a world fertile for a terrorist organization like al Quada, just as series of choices in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for violent revolutions and totalitarian regimes in the twentieth. It is a tragedy that the world as it was allowed the person bin Laden became to wield such destructive influence. But what kind of world are we laying the groundwork to build moving forward? This kind of moment in history is ideal for reflecting on this question and then working to create the future we want to see. As the old saying goes, the chickens have (and will) come home to roost.