Bin Laden:
Best Left Alone?

May 23, 2008

This week saw the release of two new recorded messages from top terrorist Osama bin Laden, still at large seven years after George W. Bush vowed to take him “dead or alive.” Richard Hrair Dekmejian, a Middle Eastern scholar in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, believes that Bush is pushing for a capture before leaving office in January.

“There is some evidence to indicate there is a special effort being done by the Bush administration,” Dekmejian says.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency knows where bin Laden is, Dekmejian believes. “However, the Pakistani government is not particularly interested in capturing bin Laden. Remember, when you kill a charismatic leader of the opposition party, like bin Laden, there is going to be a response to it. We need to understand the rules of political physics.”

“The last thing we would want is for the Pakistani government to capture him,” Dekmejian adds.

It wouldn’t be prudent for the U.S. to seize the al Qaeda leader, either, since that part of the world doesn’t believe in turning the other cheek, Dekmejian says. “It would be better for us if bin Laden is ‘martyred’ by an illness rather than by an American bomb,” he explains. “I would not want us to capture him alive.”

Richard Hrair Dekmejian, USC College professor of political science, is an expert on the Islamic world, terrorism and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Islam in Revolution.