What comes next?
The US claims and seems finally to have killed in Pakistan its old friend and enemy Osama Bin Laden. Its triumph must be subdued, however, by the fact that America’s real enemy is America itself- its arrogant and aggressive behaviour, its greed, its determination to run the world unilaterally mainly through its military might in the interests of the super rich, its contempt for the poor, the oppressed and the exploited, notwithstanding the systematic propaganda to the contrary. Finally its carelessness about the ecological effects of industry and the use of nuclear power on this planet. Does killing one man remove these problems? Or is America itself undergoing real change for good under Obama?
Could it be that the American and European support for the mostly peaceful protest movements engulfing the Arab countries against well entrenched, extremely detested pro-American and European dictators and autocrats resulted in the isolation of Bin Laden and even his betrayal by Muslims close to him who might have felt that he was an obstacle to peaceful changes in the Islamic countries, or who are simply fed up with the protracted armed conflict, or people from certain Arab or Pakistani security services ( I am thinking especially of the al-Qaddafi clique in Tripoli and Alawite thugs in Damascus ) who knew the hideout and are now afraid of the Arab spring sweeping them away too? Only time will tell.
If the intentionally highly exaggerated power of al-Qaida was mostly a well orchestrated illusion to justify intervention and war as I mostly think, the remaining dictators who are still feeding on this illusion, including our own dictator, Meles Zenawi, together with his friends and counterparts among the Somali opportunist warlords, clan chiefs, business men, clerics and intellectuals devouring and tearing their own country to pieces, must be really stunned, whether they admit it or not, by the news of Bin Laden’s death and must feel hung up about things until something else comes in handy to misuse and mess up or a new Osama Bin Laden is reborn to justify their parasitic existence and arbitrary rule.