THEY GOT HIM!

May 03, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The streets of New York and Washington were alive yesterday, not with the smattering of AFC and the PNCR supporters picketing the presence in the United States of the Guyanese Head of State and his newly appointed adviser, but for another reason.
What brought the Americans out into the streets of those cities in large numbers was the news that the world most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks had been killed during a US Navy Seal operation in Pakistan.
For ten years, Bin Laden had run from the United States. For ten years, he eluded capture.
After 9/11 the Americans demanded that the government of Afghanistan hand over Bin Laden. The Afghan Government refused and the Taliban was swept out of power by American military force.
Bin Laden and his deputy escaped capture and have been on the run ever since. But when it comes to the Americans, you can run, but you cannot hide. Eventually they caught up with him.
He was found in a populated area in Pakistan and after a gunfight with US forces, he was outgunned and eventually shot and killed.
Like with the pursuit of the Argentinean- born revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara in October 1967, the superior intelligence- gathering of the Americans paid off. It took eight months to pin Bin Laden down to his location, but the American eventually were able to confirm what they suspected and closed in on the world’s most wanted.
In 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had for months tracked Che in the mountains of Bolivia and had worked with that country’s military in pursuing him.
They were interested too much in the group that he headed. He was the target of their efforts. It was he who they wanted because they knew that just like he did in Cuba with Fidel, if he succeeded in Bolivia, armed revolution would have swept the continent.
And so the operation to get “Papa” was launched. A Bolivian battalion acting in co with the Central Intelligence Agency tracked Che and his poorly armed small band of men in a ravine. Che was cornered and outflanked. The soldiers unleashed a volley of gunfire towards him. Hit many times and unable to move, he shouted out to the soldiers who moved in to finish him off, “Do not shoot, I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead.”
Badly wounded, he was taken prisoner and moved to a secure location. Acting on orders from his high command, one of the soldiers eventually went to Che and informed him that he had to kill him. Che in response said, “It is better like this… I should never have been captured alive.”
This is not a comparison between Che and Bin Laden. Che would never raise his weapons against civilians. Che had tremendous human and revolutionary values and would never contemplate the sort of terror attributable to Bin Laden.
But both men share something in common. Both men were pursued relentlessly by the CIA and were killed in highly controversial circumstances.
In both cases questions have been asked as to whether both men could not have been taken alive. In 1967, the Bolivians had no intention of allowing Che to face a trial and thus focus international attention on their country.
The debate will go on as to whether Bin Laden could also not have been taken alive. The debate will go on about whether it was necessary to kill Bin Laden.
But what about Bin Laden? Would he have wanted to have been taken alive? Not likely! And from all accounts he went down fighting.
Just as Che’s supporters were unwilling to accept that he could have been captured and killed by the CIA, so too there will be countless persons throughout the world who will cast doubt as to whether Bin Laden is really dead or whether the Americans got the wrong man
In the days to come, there will be many other conspiracy theories firstly as to whether the United States got the right man. There will be some persons who will swear that the body that the Americans were said to have buried at sea was not Bin Laden.
People will ask why if they got Bin Laden did they hurry to bury him, raising doubts about the true identity of the man whose death brought thousands into the streets of New York and Washington yesterday?
Do not be fooled by such stories. The Americans are not going to make a mistake. Bin Laden is dead. They got their man. They got Bin Laden.

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