Mission Accomplished. Version 2.0

On May 1st 2003 the US President George W Bush stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and announced that with the toppling of Iraq's Saddam Hussein America's war on terror was over. On May 1st 2011 US President announced that US forces had killed the founder of Al Qeada, Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Details are still emerging but apparently back in August 2010 US intelligence managed to identify a man who they believed to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted couriers and began to track his movements. As the intelligence picture became more detailed on April 29th 2011 the Americans were able to confirm that the courier was staying with Bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On May 1st 30-40 members of the US Navy's elite SEAL team six launched an operation from a base in Afghanistan to kill or capture Bin Laden. Without the permission or prior knowledge of the Pakistani government the SEAL team used four helicopters to fly into Pakistan and assault the compound. In the early stages of the raid the SEAL's took a number of civilians prisoner in order to protect them during the 30 minute fire fight that followed. It was during this fire fight that Bin Laden was cornered and after refusing to surrender was shot twice in the head killing him instantly. While we can argue for forever and day about the moral rights and wrongs of killing Bin Laden it is something that the Americans are entitled to do under the rules which everyone else in the world has agreed to. Therefore it was both legal and justified.

After the SEAL team had secured the bodies of Bin Laden, one of his sons, two couriers and a female bodyguard they released the civilian prisoners, destroyed one of their helicopters that that been damaged in the attack and flew out aboard the other three helicopters. The entire ground part of the operation took just 40 minutes and the were no American causalities.

Bin Laden's body was then flown back to Afghanistan where DNA samples were taken and the body was formally identified before being buried at sea in an undisclosed location. The reason for this swift and rather secretive burial was twofold. Firstly parading the body of someone you've killed is just disrespectful and America didn't want to be seen lusting over Bin Laden's bloody corpse. Also the Islamic faith requires that a body is buried a maximum of 24 hours after death so the Americans were trying to show Bin Laden some respect in death. Secondly Bin Laden is going to be viewed as a martyr by his supporters so if he was buried on land his grave would quickly become a shrine. Obviously without proof of Bin Laden's death rumours are going to start that he's not really dead. However in that part of the world people do love a good conspiracy theory and many Pakistanis don't even believe that Al Qaeda carried out the September 11th attacks so I think those rumours will persist no matter how many gory pictures of Bin Laden's dead body the Americans release.



Edited @ 22:50 to add;

I didn't support the war against Afghanistan. Nor did I support the September 11th attacks or a few hundred other things that created the conditions for those attacks. However 10 years down that road I think Americas decision to raid Bin Laden's compound, especially in the way it was carried out, was the right decision and one they can rightly feel proud of. That said I'm not so naive as to think Bin Laden's death is going to cause Al Qaeda to suddenly crumble or end the war in Afghanistan even if it is a step in the right direction.

So the title of this post was simply to point out that it did occur on the 8th anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and possibly draw a small comparison between Obama and Bush's contrasting approaches. As for the timing of the raid itself I think fair bet that Bin Laden summound his courier in case he needed to prepare a response the Britain's Royal Wedding.