On Monday morning, Kevin Ryan woke up and heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed, but Ryan had a few doubts.
At about 10 p.m. the night before, news started to spread that President Obama would address the nation to announce that U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“I think there’s a lot of reason to believe he’s been dead for some years,” he said.
Ryan is a member of 911 Working Group of Bloomington, an organization whose members are skeptical of the widely accepted account of Sept. 11 and suspect some U.S. government involvement in the attacks on that day.
In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, Ryan said Afghan officials were willing to hand bin Laden over to U.S. authorities if the latter could provide evidence that he was, in fact, behind the attacks.
“No evidence was ever provided,” he said.
He said news media outlets have reported bin Laden’s death on other occasions since Sept. 11 and that there are some gaps in the story this time.
“If the body has been buried at sea, then there’s nothing we can do to corroborate that it was Osama bin Laden,” Ryan said. “What we really need to know is was that him that was killed and what does it mean for our mission.”
Above all, Ryan said he hopes the government’s announcement of bin Laden’s death will lead to a quick end to military action in Afghanistan, which began in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and has continued ever since.
“The president told us that justice is done, and I hope that means the mission is done,” he said. “If we can get that evidence and then evidence that he actually was killed, I think that will help us all get to a better understanding of this and some closure.”
Former 9th District U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton has spent the better part of 10 years working on uncovering information on the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hamilton serves as the vice chair of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9-11 Commission, which was created by former President George W. Bush to investigate the events of Sept. 11.
“My reaction, of course, is that this news is welcomed,” Hamilton said. “He has been such a top priority for our military and intelligence people for almost ten years.”
But he said there remain some questions in the wake of bin Laden’s death, including who will succeed bin Laden and the U.S. relationship with Pakistan moving forward.
Hamilton also said al-Qaida will likely retaliate and that the War on Terror is far from over.
“I think our guard must be kept up,” he said. “We must identify with specificity the nature of future attacks ... we must not be complacent.”
From day one, Hamilton said, al-Qaida’s goals have been clear, and he doesn’t expect them to change.
“We never had any doubt on the intent of al-Qaida: to kill as many Americans as possible,” he said.
In the mission to kill bin Laden, though, there were no American casualties, and Hamilton said he is thankful for that.
“It's a hugely important achievement made even more significant by the fact that no Americans were killed,” he said. “All of us feel a sense of relief that justice has been done with this assassination.”
On Monday, two experts at IU offered insight into the significance of bin Laden’s death in the context of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the democratic revolutions in the Middle East this spring.
“What this shows the people in these countries is that the U.S. does follow through on what it says it will do, that the U.S. is fighting against terrorism and that the U.S. has common cause with Arabs who are seeking democratic, secular nation-states,” Jamsheed Choksy, professor of Iranian studies, stated in a press release.
Sumit Ganguly, director of research at the Center on American and Global Security, said one of the primary concerns raised by the mission to kill bin Laden is that of the U.S.’s relationship with Pakistan.
“American policymakers, regardless of administration, have periodically stated that Pakistan is an invaluable ally in the war on terror,” he said. “Yet, on occasion, they have also expressed frustration about Pakistan's failure to fully deliver on its professed commitments.”
Ganguly said Pakistani officials were not notified of the operation before it took place. He also said there is some reason to believe the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding long before the U.S. took action.
“They had consistently denied any knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts,” Ganguly said. “His hideout, if it can be so called, was a mere mile away from a Pakistani military garrison.”
But the U.S. still has work to do, Choksy said, and Pakistan is going to have to be a part of it.
“This is a point where we need to ramp up the pressure, when al Qaeda is reeling, and also on the Pakistani government and the Pakistani intelligence services to follow through,” he said.
Rep. Todd Young, R-9th District, spent his Monday afternoon in the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency on a pre-scheduled trip for freshman legislators, Communications Director Trevor Foughty said.
Young said bin Laden’s death hits close to home. Before becoming a Congressman, he was a member of the Marine Corps and now serves as a member of the Armed Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I think this really validates the sacrifices that so many in our military and their families make in order to keep us safe at home,” Young said in an e-mail. “It provides a real clarity of purpose to their mission, both to them and to the rest of us.”
Young found out the same way many other Americans did: via mainstream media and Foughty’s Twitter.
In the aftermath of the successful operation against bin Laden, Young, like Hamilton, Ganguly and Chosky, remains cautious about the U.S.’s future in Afghanistan.
“It’s probably too early to say how this might change things,” he said. “Al-Qaida and other extremists still want to attack us, and we don’t know how they might react or evolve to this news. Until we see how it unfolds, I don’t think we can say how it might or might not change our missions overseas.”
— Charles Scudder contributed to this report.
