Very few people manage the level of elusiveness of Bin Laden. However, we could’ve taken care of the problem that Al Queda has become in the past. There are a lot of factors that go into the issue of the rarely discussed hunt for Al Queda’s leader.
One of the first things we have to remember is that we trained and funded him as a surrogate to combat the spread of Communism. This means the government should have been keeping an especially close eye on him while he was helping America fight the “evil red horde.” Assuming this vigilance, we should have prevented some of the biggest Al Queda terrorists acts after the Cold War by at least putting him and his followers into custody when he started slipping into criminal activity under the guise of religious extremism.
Now some people might make the argument that it was the religions that caused him to turn against the Western nation(s) that employed him. That’s just not true though. Religion is the scapegoat. The tenants of most religions are to be peaceful, tolerant and accepting of others regardless of a person’s faults, beliefs or preferences.
If religion is the reason for attacks when they preach peace, love and acceptance there is a contradiction in terms from reality to religious principles. Even Islam, though some people have stereotyped Muslims as violent, is a peaceful religion that shares the same God as the Jewish Yahweh or the Christian God. Jihad doesn’t necessarily mean Holy War. It means struggle and that could include a personal struggle with your own faith.
The problem isn’t with the religion itself. It’s a problem of politics, necessity and religious extremism tied to criminal activity. Religiousness is like nationalism. It’s a good thing unless people get involved and mob appeal starts kicking in. If mob appeal kicks in, it’s not a big problem for everyone under the same religion or nation’s flag. The only time it reaches that level of problematic influence is when the religion or nation is completely corrupted by the leadership, also giving the standard populace the option of “open dissent means death.” Examples of this include fascist dictatorships of the early twentieth century like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or Stalinist Russia. Before it reaches this level, it might be no more than a bunch of malcontents blowing off some steam to cope with the stresses of everything put against their group or nation from within or without.
Getting back to the topic of Bin Laden, while we could’ve arrested or even killed Bin Laden before he became a big problem for the whole world, we didn’t. This is because until the Bin Laden family disowned Osama, both Osama and our own government had strong ties to his family. We still have strong ties to his family, although, we can’t seem to find an extremist whose body is in such deterioration that the last time we heard anything, he was spending most of his time hooked up to a dialysis machine.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll find some of the world’s most elusive treasures like the Holy Grail or lost creatures like the Loch Ness Monster before we find this wanted terrorist that is rarely brought up as a concern by our own government. The only time that Al Queda and Bin Laden are brought up now is when the government is doing some much needed fear mongering to send more funds out of the United States to fund the wars that aren’t even addressing one of the biggest threats to America, a terrorist who knows our system and how to exploit its weaknesses.