In the wake of the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed, expert faculty members have been publicly reacting to the news that the former head of al-Qaida and the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is dead.
“My first conscious reaction was probably relief,” Wilson School professor Barbara Bodine said. Bodine formerly served as ambassador to Yemen and as the acting coordinator for counterterrorism.
President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death late Sunday evening after bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Celebrations broke out across campus, with some eating clubs going on tap to celebrate the news, and across the country. In Washington, D.C., crowds gathered outside the White House singing and cheering.
“I wish we would stop dancing in the street,” Bodine added. “I don’t think it’s appropriate or becoming.”
According to faculty members, the death of bin Laden poses both advantages and difficulties in future political and military interactions with the Middle East.
“My reaction was, that’s good but it doesn’t solve our problems,” said Wilson School professor Robert Finn GS ’78, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003. Finn added that, although bin Laden was only a nominal leader, his death was still important.
“I think we had managed to marginalize him over the years, but he was important as a figurehead,” Finn explained. “We shouldn’t denigrate the importance of figureheads.”
According to Bodine, while bin Laden was influential, the success of recent political demonstrations in the Middle East shows that bin Laden’s political movement may be becoming obsolete.
“One of the things that people were talking about even before bin Laden was killed on Sunday was that the demonstrators have effected more political change in a manner of months, through peaceful demonstrations, than al-Qaida was able to do in 20 years,” Bodine said. “I think that, in some ways, al-Qaida had already demonstrated that its relevance for the future of the Middle East was minimal, and I suppose it’s somewhat fitting that this is the time that bin Laden is finally taken out.”
Both Finn and Bodine noted that, in addition to being a success on its own, bin Laden’s death could also provide political advantages in future negotiations with the Taliban and U.S. standing in the Middle East.
“In terms of the overall conflict, this provides an opening for us to have a dialogue with the Taliban and say, ‘Look, these are the people who got you in trouble. Because you observed Islamic laws of hospitality, all of this happened to you; maybe now is a good time to end that relationship,’ ” Finn said. “This is a good plus, if you think of it as a chip in these negotiations. This is good for our side.”
Bodine noted that the news could help further destabilize the increasingly decentralized al-Qaida organization.

“Al-Qaida has always been a decentralized organization, and certainly in recent years has become more so,” Bodine noted. “On one level, this doesn’t change our counterterrorism efforts. But on another level, quite obviously, taking out Osama bin Laden very much changes, I think, the calculation of those in al-Qaida on what their long-term security and stability prospects are.”
“It also signals to the world that we’re still furious about [Sept. 11],” she added.
Bodine also explained that the successful campaign against bin Laden could prove effective as a warning against other wanted members of al-Qaida.
“There’s a number of people ... that we have long been very interested in, and they certainly must be feeling a little bit insecure this week,” Bodine noted. “If we could finally track down bin Laden in a compound as secure, remote and disconnected as he had set up in Pakistan ... my guess is, any time they hear a helicopter, they’re going to get very, very nervous.”
Yet the effect of the news on the Middle East — and, in particular, bin Laden’s followers — might not be entirely beneficial, Finn said, despite the apparent advantages of the successful operation.
“We’re going to have to look for burn-back from the terrorists,” Finn said. “Of course they’re going to do something. When, I don’t know. Not necessarily today or tomorrow, but they will of course try to retaliate.”
Bodine, however, said that removal of bin Laden from the political scene could allow the United States to move forward in diplomatic affairs and see past the past several years of difficulty with the Middle East.
“What it should really mean for Americans is that we can start to move on, and perhaps we can start to see the Middle East and the Islamic world through a prism other than the narrative that bin Laden was trying to write,” Bodine explained. “I think that would be to the good. It’s time for us to recognize that there’s more to the Arab world and the Islamic world than the al-Qaida story.”