"Beyond
ensuring the re-election of Barack Obama, the end of bin Laden points to the end
of an era in which millions of Muslims, disenchanted with the outrageous
conditions in their communities, saw their future in a dark past. … The uprisings
have brought the Arab world back to the future. They had already killed bin
Laden."
Osama bin Laden is an icon
from a world we don't want (and won't have).
Although some on the left, as
always, may have been enchanted with his quixotic character and anti-American
crusade, the godfather of global Islamic terror was a reactionary nihilist who
fought, not to defeat the West, but to take down pro-Western regimes in Arab
lands.
By spectacularly toppling the
World Trade Center towers, bin Laden wanted to win the hearts and minds of the
Arab world for his quest to establish an Islamic caliphate.
Just as the Arab in the street is finally
rising up against his dictators and oppressors, bin Laden was killed by an
American squadron in Pakistan.
But that which motivates
Syrian, Egyptian and Yemeni youth to confront the bayonets of Arab dictators is
not the obscurantist Islamic fervor of bin Laden and his followers, but a
yearning for freedom much closer to Western values than strictly Islamic ones.
The training of many of the leaders of the ongoing
Arab revolt was funded by a program promoting democracy in the
Arab world, which was initiated under President George W. Bush's government as
a response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Far more than the Quran, Facebook
is what has captured their attention and guides young Arab revolutionaries today.
In the end, bin Laden was found
in a mansion far from the Pakistan-Afghan border and the caves that helped him create
the myth of the ascetic and contemplative holy warrior.
Nothing could have been more cynical
or contrary to reality. Al-Qaeda and the hundreds of bloody organizations it spawned
around the world over the past ten years have spilled far more Muslim blood
than any Western troops - particularly in the crazed Iraqi civil conflict after
the war, when al-Qaeda played such a seminal role.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Americans went to the streets
in jubilation after the announcement that their public enemy No. 1 was dead, for whom there
was a bounty of $25 million - dead or alive.
But this isn't just an
American party. The fight against Islamist extremism is a fight for freedom.
The September 11th terrorist attacks brought new controls, and interrupted the
march toward free societies and broader individual liberties.
Beyond ensuring the
re-election of Barack Obama, the end of bin Laden points to the end of an era in
which millions of Muslims, disenchanted with the outrageous conditions in their
communities, saw their future in a dark past.
The uprisings have brought
the Arab world back to the future. They had already killed bin Laden.
Sérgio Malbergier was the editor of the Money section of
the Folha de S.
Paulo
(2004-2010) and the prior 4 years he was the editor of the World section. A correspondent
in London (1994), he was sent as a special correspondent to countries like
Iraq, Israel and Venezuela, among others. He has directed two short films, A Árvore [The Tree] (1986) and Carô no Inferno [Carô in Hell] (1987). He writes for Folha Online on Thursdays.
