Robert Grenier, a former CIA spook, penned an interesting column for AJ that questions Osama bin Laden’s relevance in the world prior to his death, and posits that dying was the best thing that could have happened to him:
But for bin Laden, who might well have met martyrdom with many of his followers at Tora Bora, such was his megalomaniacal conception of his importance that he believed his greatest contribution to the movement would be to ensure his own survival, even as those around him were martyred for the cause.
Consider, then, what it must have been like for such an ego to fade into functional obscurity. As he was reduced to issuing occasional audio tapes of increasing irrelevance, even the core of the organisation he founded learned to live without him. And the scattered little groups around the globe which had appropriated the al-Qaeda name in fact had little connection to bin Laden’s organisation, and still less to bin Laden himself.
Indeed, what must have been most crushing for bin Laden was the rise of the so-called Arab Spring. The very people in the Arab world whose concerns bin Laden claimed most importantly to represent have revealed the utter fallacy at the heart of Sheikh Osama’s message.
The al-Qaeda leader had long professed that the only means of liberation for the Muslims was to strike at the Western powers who propped up their repressive leaders, and thereby to undo the vast US-led conspiracy to subjugate them. What the Arab youth have shown is that the means of their liberation is in their own hands, and has always been. Indeed, they have shown that in the face of their moral example, the Western world, more often than not, will be forced to support them.
By the way, Columbia School of Journalism is presenting Al Jazeera English it’s highest honor, the Columbia Journalism Award.