Bin Laden was already stopped - by young Arabs

The big story was that they got him, not that he was stopped.Osama bin Laden was already stopped.

Sure, the al-Qaida movement could still massacre Christians at aBaghdad church and try to put package bombs on cargo planes headedfor the United States, but bin Laden's plan for a restored Islamicsuper-state enforcing a puritanical Islam had sunk into irrelevancefor the very people the terrorist sought to inspire.

We killed him. They stopped him.

Bin Laden was last-century's news in an Arab world whose youngpeople were concluding that modern democracy, rather than a medievalcaliphate enforcing puritanical Islam, would address their anger andfrustration. Women joined demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemenand Syria. Some were seized, killed and raped - but the women werenot going to be the silent shadows of the bin Laden vision.

While visiting the State Department on Monday, I asked Secretaryof State Hillary Clinton how the death of bin Laden might change thedynamics of the Arab Spring uprising. She said foreign policyexperts are trying to figure that out by closely monitoring what washappening on the Internet.

The young Arabs who were coordinating their protests via Twitter,Facebook and other social media were now sharing their responses tobin Laden's death. Foreign policy experts, Clinton said, wereanalyzing the comments for patterns, trying to put the piecestogether.

Clinton said American diplomacy, meanwhile, would try to put thekilling of bin Laden in a proper frame - "to shape its meaning andcreate a narrative to convince people that he was not a martyr. Hewas a murderer."

Martyr or murderer, bin Laden already did not seem to mattermuch. Support for the terrorist had already crashed in the Muslimworld, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Asked whether theyhad confidence in bin Laden to do the right thing in world affairs,only 1 percent of Muslims in Lebanon said yes, down from 19 percentin 2003.

In Jordan, the percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in binLaden had collapsed from 56 percent in 2003 to 13 percent now. BinLaden's highest confidence rating, 34 percent, is found in thePalestinian territories, but even that number is down sharply from72 percent in 2003.

What happened? Well, in 2005, al-Qaida claimed responsibility forblowing up 52 people in hotels in Amman, Jordan's, capital. Twoyears later, the group boasted of bomb attacks in the Algeriancapital of Algiers, killing 33 innocents. Months later, its bombsmassacred 41 at the U.N. offices in Algiers.

Last year, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for bombing hotels inBaghdad, killing 36, then in October, storming into a Sunday mass inone of the city's churches and massacring 52. Last month, terroristsbelieved to be al-Qaida operatives set off a bomb in Marrakesh,Morocco, killing 15 people, 10 of them foreigners.

Could there be any greater difference in tactics than between thebrave nonviolence of young Arab demonstrators facing off againstarmed totalitarians and the cowardly violence of al-Qaida againstbystanders?

Could there be any wider gulf in aspiration than between the pro-democracy youth wanting votes and jobs and the al-Qaida dictatorsseeking to enforce an all-controlling brand of religion and to shutaway half the population, women?

To Americans who suffered directly or indirectly from theoutrages of Sept. 11, 2001 - nearly all of us - the killing of binLaden brought a sense of justice. From a geopolitical standpoint,though, did it matter all that much what cave or mansion or closethe was hiding in?

Frankly, his fall to insignificance was the sweetest revenge.

Harrop is a columnist for The Providence Journal.