Twenty years after 9/11, we were finally able to take-out Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man to Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist group that carried off the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Remember how many of bin Laden’s number two’s we took out over the years? Until they got bin Laden himself 11 years ago, it seemed like we killed a “top lieutenant” in that accursed band of fundamentalist Muslim gypsies every other week or so.
After bin Laden got deep-sixed, however, this guy Zawahiri took over and has run al Qaeda ever since. There’s no question he was a bad guy. He was responsible over the years for multiple terrorist attacks. It was a squad of his guys who murdered 62 tourists at the al-Bahari temple across the Nile from Luxor, Egypt, in 1997. In 1998, it was al Zawahiri’s group Islamic Jihad that was behind simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people, most of them citizens of those countries. He was the mastermind behind the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 37. After he joined his organization with al Qaeda, he and bin Laden were responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, making him the second most wanted man in the world, with a $5 million price on his head. The reward went up to $25 million after bin Laden was killed.
Yet does removing Zawahiri from the battlefield really do anything for us? No less a thinker than Tucker Carlson raised this very question last night on his show after President Biden made the announcement that Zawahiri had been hit by a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was living as a guest of the Haqqani network, a faction of the Taliban government currently running Afghanistan. “Feel safer? Of course you don't,” Carlson taunted. “Nobody does. And the reason nobody feels safer is Biden's response to the disaster in Afghanistan.” He then launched into accusing Biden of “provoking” Russia to invade Ukraine, but then, that’s what Tucker does every night – discover yet another terrible thing that Biden and the Democrats are responsible for.
But like so many lies spread by dingbats like Tucker Carlson – the COVID vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective so it’s safer to avoid getting your shot – his question contains a crumb of truth. We probably aren’t any safer because we hit Zawahiri with a drone strike. Al Qaeda doubtlessly already has a number two ready to take over as number one to continue the jihad against Jews and Crusaders.
So does that mean we shouldn’t have killed him? No, because killing Zawahiri will make it that much harder for al Qaeda to plan and carry out whatever attack on us infidels they’ve got in the pipeline, and it’s a shot across the bow of the Taliban as well, letting them know that they may think they can get away with anything they want as long as they remain within the borders of Afghanistan, but they can’t. We’re always watching, and we’ve got the capability to kill anyone over there who we think needs killing. I wouldn’t want to be a Taliban leader living in the luxurious surroundings of what passes for Kabul’s Beverly Hills neighborhood right now, would you?
But the idea that you can affect what goes on in a place like Afghanistan just because you’ve got several trillion dollars and a whole bunch of jets and drones and other high-tech weaponry is folly. For evidence that is true, have a look at what trillions of our tax dollars got us in both Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 20 or so years. The word bupkus comes immediately to mind.
We didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam after we stopped fighting that war, and we’re not going to learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan now that we’ve stopped fighting over there either. It’s not because we’re stupid. It’s because nothing in this world makes sense. How do you explain the centuries of conflict that have been caused by the Sunni-Shiite split over who should succeed the prophet Muhammad over 14 centuries ago? How do you explain the hundreds, if not thousands of religious wars that have been fought ever since mankind came up with the incredibly terrible idea that humans need a religion to believe in, or their lives will have no meaning…or something like that, anyway?
Nearly every religion believes it is the right and only true one worth believing in. But hell, nearly every politician asking for your vote believes he or she is the only true one worth believing in. Every political philosophy has thought it would be the answer to all the problems of mankind. And so on and so on.
The truth is that very, very little that man does on this earth makes any sense at all. Oh, every once in a while, somebody discovers gravity and writes an equation and the world of quantum mechanics is born, or somebody else discovers penicillin or the polio vaccine, or the steam and internal combustion engines give birth to an industrial revolution…
Oh, wait. Cancel that one. Coal smoke and automotive exhaust are killing the planet, so that didn’t end up making much sense, either.
You get what I’m saying, though, don’t you? You can do stuff that you think at the time is a good idea and will make a difference to mankind, but really all we’re doing is fooling around at the edges of existence.
Think about this, for example. Imagine you were one of the dudes who came up with the idea of rebuilding the ancient city of Aleppo after it was destroyed for the umpteenth time by Tamerlane in 1400. A whole different city was built outside the walls of the Old City. Ruled over by Romans, Selijuqs, Mamluks, Byzantines, and Ottomans over the centuries, the city of Aleppo has been rich in architecture, religious sites, souks, and ancient neighborhoods of elaborate residential buildings.
Then came Putin and al-Assad and jets and bombs and poison gas and a new, more efficient deadly war, and all those centuries of stunning architecture and history – gone again.
But it had happened before the 15th Century, of course. Aleppo was called Armi in the 3rd millennium B.C., and then came the Yammads and the Hittites and the Hurrians and then the Assyrians and the Babylonians and then Alexander the Great took it over for the Greeks and then the Romans and then the Persians and then the Arabs moved in…
You get the picture. As a general rule, we humans are not up to much good. Hell, an entire political movement in our own country that follows a ruler who has never been up to any good at all makes my point perfectly.
So we got Zawahiri. Another one of them will be along soon enough, just as another Tucker Carlson will be along probably sooner than we’d like. Does that mean we shouldn’t have taken him out? No, but just have a look at what taking out the entire city of Aleppo accomplished for various rulers and civilizations over not just the centuries, but the millennia.
And we’re still at it.
I recently concluded that opposable thumbs are the worst mistake of evolution.
Great essay, Lucian.
We're all just monkeys in bigger, deadlier tribes
John Lennon:
Imagine there's no country
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too