Eliminating the personal focus of an ideal

Iconic Extrajudicial Execution of Jesus through Osama by US? (Part #4)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

It is widely assumed that eliminating the primary leader of an organization, if not the leadership, ensures its demise. This has been the strategy closely associated with General Petraeus in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- presumably to be further promoted with his recent accession to the directorship of the CIA (Ray McGovern, Petraeus Will Expand Pro-War Agenda as New CIA Director, Democracy Now, 28 April 2011).

Commentary focuses on the question of whether al-Qaida will now lose its coherence and capacity to inspire terrorist attacks (Jason Burke, Without 'the sheikh' al-Qaida's hardcore is likely to fracture, The Guardian, 3 May 2011). What credibility does such commentary and analysis have when applied to the execution of the historical Jesus? As previously noted by Jason Burke (Al-Qaida is now an idea not an organisation, The Guardian, 5 August 2005):

... we need to face up to the simple truth that Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri et al do not need to organise attacks directly. They merely need to wait for the message they have spread around the world to inspire others. Al-Qaida is now an idea, not an organisation.

As argued by Sebastian L. v. Gorka (The Death of Osama bin Laden: What Does It Mean? Hudson New York, 3 May 2011):

Therefore, although al Qaeda is organizationally weakened, it can ideologically survive its founder's death. In fact, the strain of violent fanatical Islam upon which al Qaeda was built was not founded by bin Laden, or anyone of his generation, but predates even the Muslim Brotherhood's creation in the 1920s. In the weeks that follow, the question will be: How will the subscribers to al Qaeda around the world react to the news of the death of its self-appointed and charismatic leader, bin Laden? Fortunately, even if a handful of bin Laden's ideological followers initiate cells themselves, in what author and former CIA operative Marc Sageman has called "Leaderless Jihad," they will most likely lack the knowledge and training to do serious harm to the security of the nation. In the meantime, Osama bin laden will never kill again.

Curiously, with respect to that concluding sentence, it remains unproven whether Osama has actually "killed" anyone (following his former combat role) -- anymore than Jesus. Arguably Jesus does continue to "kill" however -- and may even have "killed" Osama (with the blessing of military chaplains of  Christian persuasion). Osama is of course widely accused of being a "mass murderer" through what he enabled, even against the Russians, with American approval. However enabling death is what military commanders of every religious persuasion continue to do -- as with Obama and Bush.

Controversy rages over whether the death of Osama now enables troops to be rapidly withdrawn (Killing sparks calls for early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, The Guardian, 4 May 2011). The latter reported a Kabul source to the effect:

They have killed the person of Bin Laden but not the reason why he exists and what he is for. They have destroyed his body, not his cause. In fact, they have created another martyr without addressing the fundamental reason why Osama and the movement behind him exists. America is still occupying two Muslim countries and bombarding another.

A characteristic of many current "organizations", including those which are the focus of counter-terrorism, is that they are no longer as significant for the coherence and development of ideas and agendas as was the case in the past. It is in fact questionable the extent to which some may be held to "exist", as argued in comparing the Tea Party movement with Al-Qaida (Cultivating Global Strategic Fantasies of Choice: learnings from Islamic Al-Qaida and the Republican Tea Party movement, 2010). Ironically, the historical development of Christianity reinforces that point. [This document is written in a country which has exceeded the record of Iraq for functioning without a government, namely for over a year. What "exists"?]

Conventional understanding of organizations may well obscure the subtle dynamic coherence which effectively sustains them, as previously argued (Dynamically Gated Conceptual Communities: emergent patterns of isolation within knowledge society, 2004). Those eliminated, whatever their role in eliciting and sustaining an idea, might well themselves prefer to be recognized as non-essential figureheads rather than essential to their cause. As argued with respect to Osama by Joshua Holland (Did Osama Bin Laden Win the 'War on Terror'? Perhaps we should stop cheering for our "success, AlterNet, 4 May 2011):

Had he a choice in the matter, I have no doubt that he would have wanted nothing more than to die in a hail of gunfire by foreign troops in a predominantly Muslim country, a martyr to his cause, rather than rot away in a military prison, aging poorly and providing living proof that the world's most prominent terrorist "" a figure who had been elevated to an existential threat "" was ultimately impotent in the face of the world's greatest super-power.

Again, as with Jesus: The body has been disposed of, but the face will live on, according to Mark Lawson (The Everywhere and Nowhere Man, The Guardian, 3 May 2011). The point has been well-made by the image of the iconic Che Guevara which has continued to circulate since his death in 1967.

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]