3 May 2011 Last updated at 02:59 GMT
Bin Laden: How he haunted the US psyche
By Tom Geoghegan BBC News, Washington DC
The death of Osama Bin Laden prompted jubilation across the US. The emotion was
a reflection that not only was he the man behind the 9/11 attacks but also a
shadowy figure who for 10 years had haunted the national psyche.
His face became one of the most recognisable in the world.
For billions of people, Osama Bin Laden was more familiar than their next-door
neighbour, British sociologist Anthony Giddens once wrote.
By authorising the attacks on New York and Washington 10 years ago, which
killed about 3,000 people, Bin Laden instantly became the world's most wanted
man, and one of its most reviled.
But it was his continued elusiveness despite the best efforts of the US, and
the sinister videos he released from hiding, that also fuelled his infamy.
With the men who hijacked the four planes dead, the attacks became identified
with the man who masterminded them and who taped himself glorying in the death
toll.
"It's difficult for people who weren't in this country at the time to
understand the degree of fear that 9/11 and the anthrax attacks generated.
"Part of the story of New York has been how New Yorkers chose to lead their
lives despite that fear.
"There could be a terrorist attack tomorrow and the cycle could start again,
but there's something about the relentlessness of the pursuit of justice that
Obama showed in this that is cheering."
Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker magazine
As more attacks struck Bali, Madrid and London, there was a widespread fear,
around the globe, that Bin Laden could strike anywhere, despite little evidence
that he was behind those atrocities.
But news of his death chimed most strongly in the US, the superpower which he
had so shaken. There was a sense of vengeance and relief among the cheering
crowds that gathered spontaneously, late at night, not just in New York and
Washington DC but also in Miami, Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas, Texas and right
across the US.
"For Americans, he became the embodiment of the bogeyman for us, that mythical
beast that's a source of fear," says Hussein Rashid, a Muslim academic from New
York who helps to build relations across communities and faiths.
"His death is incredibly cathartic and here in New York, there's a massive
sense of relief, a sense of 'We've got the monster.' And that's the mode most
Americans will be in for a while.
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote
"The power of the bogeyman is that, while we're not actively looking for
him in the corners, we're always afraid that he's there"
Hussein Rashid Muslim academic
"It's incredibly important that we got him, but operationally it is less
significant. He hasn't been the man in charge [of al-Qaeda] and this isn't the
head of the snake."
Bin Laden's videos fanned the flames of fear by using language and symbols that
alienated Americans, says Mr Rashid, such as once comparing President George W
Bush to Hulagu Khan, a Mongol leader who conquered an Islamic empire.
"It was language they didn't have access to. I had to explain to people why he
[Khan] was so important to Muslims and that made it more powerful."
Many of those who took to the streets on Sunday night in celebration were young
people, and students at Georgetown University in Washington DC described why
the news of Bin Laden's death was so significant for them.
One of them, freshman Rashawn Davis, says: "I feel more calm in the world,
knowing that this man has gone."
Click to play
The BBC's Franz Strasser talks to students about what Bin Laden's death means
to them
Bin Laden's death has much more meaning for that generation, says Adam Gopnik,
who writes for the New Yorker magazine.
"My 16-year-old son called me last night in great excitement because this has
been the shadow he's grown up with, this frightening spectre of 9/11."
But it would be wrong to consider Bin Laden as simply a bogeyman, Gopnik says.
He was a real person who ordered the deaths of thousands of people. But he had
a magnetic fanaticism that elevated him above the level of gangster-dictators
like Saddam Hussein.
"This kind of charismatic figure is more unusual, so it's loaded for people
with more significance. Evil governed by greed and a lust for power is
something that we see all the time, but when it is governed by ideology and
fanatical religion, it has more power."
Renewed confidence
The duration of the hunt and the number of people saying Bin Laden was already
dead added to this mythical resonance, says Gopnik.
Continue reading the main story
Bin Laden's use of symbolism
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, international affairs expert David Rothkopf
says Bin Laden was not a master terrorist but knew how to use symbols to his
advantage.
"He knew that to strike at American icons would compound the impact of the
slaughter he wrought. He wanted to illustrate national vulnerability and to
incite national over-reaction."
Read David Rothkopf's blog
"What we're trying to figure out is why the response [to his death] has been so
visceral and all these reasons contribute, but the key reason is that he was an
evil guy that did a very evil thing that badly, badly traumatised this country
and he's enormously significant, both real and symbolic."
What the past 10 years have shown is that this man was not as dangerous as we
feared, says Gopnik.
"His capacity to really damage this country was extremely limited and I hope
this will exorcise the spectre of fear which was his greatest ally, much more
than his capacity to harm."
The chants of "U! S! A!" heard in Lafayette Square outside the White House
suggest Bin Laden's demise has sparked a renewed sense of patriotism.
Continue reading the main story
What teenagers made of it
Students at Frederick High School in Maryland watched President Obama's speech
in a social studies class. They were seven or eight on 11 September 2001, and
described themselves as the "9/11 generation" who'd grown up with the "war on
terror" shaping their lives and attitudes.
Aaron Coles, whose father had been in the Pentagon at the time but was
unharmed, says war had dominated his childhood ever since that day. He
expressed hope that Osama Bin Laden's death would mark the beginning of a new
chapter.
Robin Niblet, director of Chatham House, a foreign affairs think-tank in
London, says that although it won't ease the American sense of economic
decline, Bin Laden's death will re-invigorate some sense of national pride, and
it comes at just the right time.
"If the 10th anniversary of 9/11 [this September] had come and gone and Bin
Laden was still out there, it would have stuck in the craw of most Americans,
quite naturally.
"This reasserts a sense of American national power but in a way that's less to
do with its international position and more about them sleeping better at night.
"They will feel more vindicated and happy about getting the guy who planned it."
This will provide Americans with the kind of satisfying victory denied to them
in Afghanistan, he says.
In the manner of the Wild West, he adds, they went out, gathered their men and
hunted their enemy down.
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