Why Osama bin Laden Doesn't Matter

This week, Osama bin Laden is on the cover of Newsweek. The story? Back in the winter of 2004-2005, we almost got him. But you know what? It wouldn't really make a difference, and here's why.

Al Qaeda is a new kind of organization. It's a diffuse, international social network, with loose interconnections and a flexible hierarchy of reporting and command. It's just the opposite of a large country's military force, with its strict hierarchy and strong leaders at the top whose orders must always be followed. If you take out the headquarters of a traditional army, you make a huge impact on their ability to hurt you. But if you take out the "headquarters" of a loosely connected movement, nothing much happens.

This is the message that you'll read in any number of hot-selling new books: that with today's electronically connected world, with wikis, blogs, and podcasts, we are experiencing the rapid growth of a new kind of leaderless organization. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, with far more entries than Encyclopedia Britannica, and comparable accuracy; but there's no one managing all of the writers, no one assigning the right experts to articles. The Linux operating system is created by a loose, informal network of computer programmers. It's the responsibility of no one, and yet the responsibility of everyone. Books about these new leaderless organizations include Wikinomics, The Starfish and the Spider, and my own new book, Group Genius, where I show that these new organizations are often the sources of radical innovation. For example, the board game Monopoly emerged from a leaderless process; it was a handmade parlor game, passed around in the Quaker community for thirty years, before Parker Brothers came out with their version. No one was in charge.

In The Starfish and the Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom call Al Qaeda a "starfish" organization--because a starfish has no head, and if you cut off one of its legs, it will just grow back another one. (In fact, the detached leg can itself grow an entire body.) As a comparison, they tell the story of how difficult it has been for music publishers to shut down illegal online file sharing. When they won the lawsuit against Napster, several other file sharing programs sprung up that were more distributed and harder to attack legally. The lesson of this story is, the more you attack a starfish, the more distributed and diffuse it becomes. Their advice? The most effective strategies are to come up with a clever way to get Al Qaeda to become more centralized, or to become more decentralized yourself. Newsweek's article gives several examples of how the centralized nature of the U.S. military prevented effectively responding to the rapidly morphing nature of the enemy.

I've been told that the highest levels of the U.S. military are reading books like The Starfish and the Spider. I'm confident that our professionals are smarter and more innovative than any opponent. There will always be some value to capturing Osama bin Laden. But we've accomplished the main goal already: we've detached him from his network, and that's where the power is. After we catch him, the fight with the starfish will go on.

Comments

[wayoutleft]

there's one staggering fact that is never confronted in the OBL legend. that is that- in amid opium farmers, bandits, floating tribes, sectarians at odds, and what have you- no one will turn him over for 50 million dollars, the reward on his head. that is the absolutely staggering testimony to the reverence in which he is held.

[Ladyrantsalot]

I'm sorry, this guy has been nothing but trouble for the past 20 years. He and the people he continues to inspire have killed more innocents on four different continents than anyone else I can think of (well, 'cept us, of course). Just because he is in one of his familiar quiescent phases does not mean that we can continue to ignore him. He is not a starfish, but a human being. How do you eliminate the influence a guy like this has on others who yearn to kill? I would say you humiliate him. You transform him into a recognizable loser. You emasculate him. I think that when we do capture him, we arrange it so that it looks like he was running away from the field of battle--leaving his many minions to do the battle as usual. I'm still working on this one. But the idea is not to turn him into a martyr, but a loser.

[factanonverba]

Starfish or octopus? Both can lose an arm and regenerate it. Al-Qaeda seems to be a highly fluid organization and yes its cells have the ability to operate quite independently. Still Osama bin-Laden does have a high symbolic value and along with Dr. al-Haswari they have the ability to set the tone, to inspire, to coordinate the financial nexus. The starfish has no brain only a mass of primitive cells, an octopus has a highly developed one. Still I believe the best strategy is to make him irrelevant. This requires fostering an entente with Islam and assisting those societies to develop and in meeting the aspirations of its citizens.

[snaggster]

I find it difficult to understand how we know so damned much about their organizational structure, their training manuals, their membership appilications, etc. Why don't we know where the SOB is?

[FullChat]

I'm sorry, but this starfish analogy is inappropriate. A disassembled starfish continues to live because it has no brain.

Al Qaeda is a distributed organization, with cells in many countries. Certainly each of these cells can operate autonomously and prepare and carry out their independent attacks. However, there is little evidence of these cells being able to pull off a significant attack, as the plots that have been uncovered have seemed more like high school terrorist wanna-be's than the people who pulled off 9/11. Mainly because of police operations, no Western nation has been attacked in over two years.

Even in a decentralized operation, it is necessary to have leadership to provide goals, financing, motivation, and training. Right now, OBL is sitting in a cave - and thumbing his nose at the Western world as an example that you can beat the Great Satan.

OBL attacked us - not Iraq or Afghanistan - and must be brought to justice. Remember "Dead or Alive"? Works for me.

[FullChat]

OBL not important?
Did the government of Afghanistan attack us on 9/11? No.
Was the government of Iraq involved with the 9/11 attack? No.
OBL not important?
It's like OBL robbed a bank and we're killing the tellers and other customers in retaliatio­n...

[carol]

You miss some biggies here, but two in particular. If we had handled 9/11 appropriately and wiped out BinLaden, his minions, and the Taliban in AFGHANISTAN, they wouldn't now be growing legs all over the globe. And BinLaden is the guy who engineered the murder of 3000+ Americans on our own soil, not these newly grown starfish. This administration is in total denial of its role in the proliferation of terrorism, yet never misses a chance to use it as a justification for its impotent foreign and domestic policies. You are apparently colluding on this. Wake up!

[wayoutleft]

by far the most important factor in any minimizing bin laden's importance is the fact that he escaped after conducting 9/11 and hasn't been found. what a complete joke it would have been to assert that bin laden wasn't important in the fall of '01.

[Snakeback]

Osama bin BoogeyMan is a marketing slogan that has singlehandedly gotten Bush re-elected, allowed CheneyCo to defang the Constitution, and made billions for Halliburton, Blackwater, and Chritianoifascist Megachurch Preachers.

Osama bin Laden is probably behind only Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald in its success as a marketing tool.

All NeoConservatives should bow down and make an official day of respect for Bin Laden. He has made billions for them and done more to dissolve the separation of Church and State in America than any other human being.

Capturing Bin Laden will do about as much to end terrorism as capturing Saddam did to end the insurgency.

[FarSeeingArt]

OBL, it seems,isn't wanted for the 911 incident. He is at best a 'suspect'.

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

[schatsie]

Sorry, but the Repugs are the Big Man Party, that is that the biggest man gets to sit on the pile, Ask Kenny Lay whereever he is now. He was a big man and deserved every dime because he was in charge.

Same with Osama, nobody can replace him and motivate people like he does.. The reason they are throwing this crap out is to continue this idiot war.

[didereaux]

Just like the bunch who ignored history and thought Iraq was some ancient culture longing to return to it's glory. This Dr. ignores one of the most fundamental elements of the human psyche: to win. You do not 'win'(call it mete-ing out justice, whatever)until the symbolic leader of your enemy is tipped over, Geronimo caught, the Emperor brought down, or the dictator hung. Ever wonder why the king in chess is tipped over when mated?

Fuzzy, muddied logic, inadequate knowledge of the subject, and a strong disregard for Confuscious(Study without reflection is useless, reflection without study dangerous)are the elements that lead up to tragedies.­..especial­ly global ones.

[Stevelagain]

You are wrong. Bin Laden is very useful to the democratic party as propaganda value...PR­ETENDING that HE SHOULD BE THE NUMBER ONE FOCUS instead of actually doing things to fight, locate, capture or kill terrorists.

Why seek out terrorists using phones when we should have the CIA seeking out Bin Laden in some cave? Why arrest or deport radical clerics preaching intolerance when we can "learn multiculturalism from them" and should be seeking out Osama instead! Why fight Al Qaeda take overs in nations around the globe when we could be looking for Osama in the caves!

Osama has great propaganda value for the anti war crowd. Don't make war, chase Osama!

[GoodwithWood]

Your statements are inaccurate and simple minded. Typical of a Faux zombie. People like you are destroying America from within by making enemies of your fellow citizens.
Think about the negative emotions that arise in yourself when you hear the words “Democrat” or “Liberal”. Faux news and AM hate radio are destroying this country from within and you’re proof of that.

GWW

[PhilD]

Osama won Dubya the '04 election - as you're well aware OBL is nothing but a prop used by the fear-mongering Repulicans. Of course they wouldn't want to catch him - even if they falsely proclaimed that we'd get him "dead or alive". We practically escorted him out of Tora Bora with red carpet treatment (oops, the news didn't cover that and the massive airlift to Pak) Progaganda, fear, Emmanuel Goldstein.­..

[wplasvegas]

If ObL doesn't matter, then justice doesn't matter. Without justice what does government matter? If government doesn't matter, why are we writing on a political blog?

The 'some value' you refer to is considerable. Where is your passion? Or is it just that your headline is misleading? You are right about the 'starfish' but you underestimate the importance of the human heart. I agree with Dunnage, 'If I hear one more starfish story..."

[3fingerbrown]

He matters like hell here in New York. We want justice. Reducing a mass murderer at large to some kind of political abstraction is an insult to the dead. Get bin Laden!

[peterg76]

Next thing you know, perjury and outing CIA agents won't matter....

[peterg76]

Wrong. His symbolic value is beyond measure.

Bin Laden went to war with the US and he won. Bush went to war with bin Laden and not only lost, but ever since has done everything humanly possible to compound his country's tragedy.

Maybe some Americans with short attention spans have forgotten bin Laden, but the rest of the world has not.

[1will]

Very true.
Osama is now one of the most popular names in the Muslim world. If he was irrelevent then I doubt he would be looked up to and have babies named after him.

[yellowdogSC]

And I'd guess "George" is one of the LEAST popular names in the Christian world...

Followed closely by "W."...