The weather on the morning of Sunday, May 1st, was a springtime glory: crisp, sunny, infinite blue skies––the sort of conditions that pilots call “severe clear.” Such a morning comes along so infrequently that, especially if you were walking along Vesey or Church Streets, past the startling emptiness of the construction site still known as Ground Zero, the perfection might have evoked memories of the worst day in the history of the city—the morning nearly ten years ago, equally bright, equally cool, when the suicidal fanatics of Osama bin Laden’s army steered jets into the Twin Towers, and left thousands to die under smoldering glass and steel.

Illustration by TOM BACHTELL

At around nine-forty-five that Sunday evening, as we were finishing the dishes or putting the kids to bed, the bulletins began: a tumble of cyber-hints and obscure details, televised requests to stay tuned for important news—and then, just after eleven-thirty, President Obama striding into the East Room of the White House to inform the country that “justice has been done,” that Special Operations forces had just hours earlier completed a “targeted operation” to kill bin Laden at a lightly guarded compound in northern Pakistan. Soldiers had packed his corpse into a helicopter, the official accounts said, and, from the deck of the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, they slid his properly sanctified remains into the North Arabian Sea.

Bin Laden, as medieval ideologist and global terrorist, had a record of accomplishment that was as vast as it was hideous. He did more to slash the fabric of American life than anyone since the Second World War. His capacity to arouse the fevered imaginations of young fundamentalists led to the murder of thousands of men, women, and children—among them Muslim men, women, and children—in Aden, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Washington, New York, Shanksville, Bali, Madrid, London, Baghdad, Kabul, and Marrakech. He provoked wars. He forced the rise of expensive structures of security and surveillance. He incited a national politics of paranoia and retribution. He did as much as the economic rise of China and India has done to undermine America’s short-lived post-Cold War status as a singular, self-confident, seemingly omnipotent superpower. Bin Laden signed his last will and testament on December 14, 2001, while hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, instructing his children not to work for Al Qaeda: “If it is good, then we have had our share; if it is bad, then it is enough.” Despite all efforts to capture or assassinate him, he survived for a decade, eventually finding greater comfort in a Pakistani hill station.

When the news of his death finally came, it inspired a nightlong burst of triumphal celebration at Ground Zero, in Lafayette Park, and elsewhere. But, when the cameras turned to those who had lost family and close friends ten years ago, their quiet sense of relief was generally mixed with revived sorrow. For them, there was no glee, no illusion that the lost had been returned. And it was in that restrained spirit that the President called on the country to renew old decencies. “On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together,” he said. “We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other and our love of community and country.”

“And no hitting below where a normal person wears his belt.” Facebook

Twitter

Email

Shopping

At the moment, however, it is hard to recall Obama’s announcement without also recalling the bizarre political context of the days that immediately preceded it. In recent weeks, one of Obama’s leading opponents in the polls for the 2012 election had been a swirly-haired hotelier and reality-show Barnum, who gets around in a black helicopter. Germophobic and handshake-averse, Donald Trump was an unlikely candidate, yet he won support for expressing doubt that the President was a U.S. citizen. Perhaps Barack Obama was born in Kenya; perhaps he was not the Christian he claimed to be but a secret Muslim. The global jihad that bin Laden sought to inaugurate did not create the xenophobia that buoyed Trump’s ambitions, but it helped to electrify it. Here was another reminder of how bin Laden, by the jujitsu of terror, managed to bring out the worst not only in his admirers but in his adversaries.

No President, no matter how serious, can fully ignore the reality-show aspects of his country. Obama finally concluded that he had to make a concession to its lesser angels. He sullenly announced that he had prevailed on the State of Hawaii to release his “long form” birth certificate. Three nights later, at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, he deflated Trump with stinging bonhomie. The truly astounding aspect of the dinner was not the political japery but Obama’s knowledge that, as soon as the weather in northern Pakistan cleared, his own black helicopters would ferry a crew of Navy SEALs to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

This serious and necessary act has led to serious and necessary questions: Was bin Laden under the control of Pakistan, our putative ally, and its intelligence agency, the I.S.I., or was he really able to hide just down the road from an élite military academy? Will the death of bin Laden in the wake of the anti-authoritarian uprisings of the “Arab Spring” deal a decisive blow to jihadist movements throughout the Middle East and South Asia? And, perhaps most urgently, will the death of bin Laden accelerate the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan? Afghanistan was one of the places where Al Qaeda was born, and where it was sheltered. But Al Qaeda long ago fled to all corners, changing its mailing address to franchise cells in Waziristan, Peshawar, southern Yemen, and housing projects in European cities. Bin Laden’s death underscores the question of why we go on losing young men and women daily in the defense of an indefensibly corrupt government in Kabul.

The most stirring aspect of Obama’s speech announcing bin Laden’s death was its sobriety, its refusal of “Mission Accomplished” theatrics. One of the most surprising features of his Presidency has been its stubborn repudiation of drama—surprising because of his penchant, as a campaigner, for highly charged set-piece addresses, not least in Des Moines, Philadelphia, and Denver. But, as President, Obama has revealed himself to have a certain disdain for the emotional, for the memorable phrase and the theatrical gesture. Moments like Tucson are the rarity.

To some, it has seemed that Obama’s determination to avoid the vulgar and the cheap is a form of superiority, a bearing designed to make everyone else seem vulgar and cheap. But his seriousness is a welcome antidote to a political culture infected with self-congratulation, delusion, and paranoia. The United States has, at long last, dealt with Osama bin Laden. Dealing with his legacy will pose a still greater challenge. We remember the dead, as more die every day as a result of his example. Even now, on a clear day, far distant from the battlefield, we can still detect the smell of destruction that came through our windows for weeks after the towers fell. We hear the roaring of the jets. The political future should be entrusted only to those who honor that memory and refrain from exploiting it. ♦