After the hunt for Bin Laden

The physica disappearance of Osama bin Laden ought to be the time, too, for the disappearance of the political aberrations associated with his name ? both those he directly inspired, and those he provoked in self-defense on the other side. The employment of terrorism as the raison d'être of a new type of massive, devastating war, whose sole battlefield is civilian society, and most of whose victims are nameless, defenseless citizens, Western or not, Muslim or Christian, is the Al Qaeda leader's principal contribution to the history of perversity. But it is not the only one: the cynical exploitation of weak, corrupt and unworkable states; the elevation of a religion-imbued underground criminal network to the status of political actor; and the attempt to consecrate fanatical fantasies as international law, are other contributions.

The Muslims have been the first to bury this legacy of Bin Laden, even before his death. Such has been the message of the Arab revolutions, which draw their inspiration from democratic principles ? the very antithesis of the theocratic and dictatorial doctrine preached by the founder of Al Qaeda. It now behooves the West to clean up the toxic by-products of its self-defense against jihadism. Human rights cannot be defended by curtailing or encapsulating them, not even temporarily. Anxiety about terrorism, the public hysteria derived from it, and the feeling of living in an exceptional state of emergency, are understandable but not operative in the long term.

The United States after decreeing a permanent worldwide state of emergency ? particularly under George W. Bush ? that gave a green light to torture, arbitrary extraterritorial arrests and unilateral wars unendorsed by the institutions of international law, ought to reflect on the fact that the successful operation against Bin Laden has taken place at a time when all these political postulates are on the way out. And, certainly owing to all these factors, Guantánamo has done more for the discredit of democracy than for its victory.

A more exact knowledge of what happened in Pakistan will, in time, enable us to understand to what extent Obama has been scrupulous in the use of the legitimate methods that democracies have at their disposal to combat their enemies. They cannot establish exceptions to the principle that the end does not justify the means.

However it would be difficult to deny that the United States is legitimately and legally waging a defensive war against Al Qaeda. This was recognized by the United Nations in its resolution following September 11.

The attack that killed Bin Laden can be understood as an act of the same war. And though jihadism has tried to blur the borders between murder and military action, between the state and a religious mafia, between imposition and respect, no sensible person can accept this nebulous imprecision. To ask searching questions about the legitimacy of one's own acts is the first imperative of liberal culture.