History Tells Us That We Need Bin Laden Dead

The recent capture of Abu Zubeida, one of the top Al Qaeda leaders, is certainly good news. But where’s Osama bin Laden?

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush pledged to bring back the world’s top terrorist, “dead or alive.” He was promptly pilloried for “personalizing” the conflict. Now administration officials stress that, while they’d dearly love to get their hands on Bin Laden, this is no longer a top goal.

It’s true that capturing or killing Bin Laden wouldn’t win the war on terrorism, but not capturing or killing him would be a huge setback. To get a sense of how huge, we need to go back to 1916. On March 9 of that year, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, the famed Mexican bandit turned revolutionary, attacked the town of Columbus, N.M. His pistoleros killed 18 Americans and wounded nine.

President Woodrow Wilson, sounding very much like George W. Bush in 2001, pledged that an army expedition “will be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the single object of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays.”

Gen. John J. Pershing’s expedition is incorrectly remembered as a clumsy, lumbering, slow-footed beast. Actually its 10,000 men engaged in some of the fastest and longest cavalry rides in U.S. history. But they came close to snaring Villa only once, and that was within the first two weeks of the expedition. The Mexican revolutionary, wounded in the leg, barely escaped and then hid out in a cave to recuperate while Pershing’s men searched all of northern Mexico for him.

Pershing did manage to kill 135 Villistas, wound 85 and capture 19, but in the process he almost sparked a war with the Mexican government. By July 1916 the expedition was forced to retreat to a camp site in northern Mexico, where it remained until being withdrawn entirely in early 1917.

Villa had been on his last legs when he attacked Columbus. But the armed yanquis in their midst allowed him to rally patriotic sentiment to his side. Before long he had 5,000 men and was on the offensive.

The outcome of the Pershing expedition has long been debated by historians. Was it a success or a failure? It was a little of both, but more failure than success because it didn’t snare Villa. It didn’t matter how many of his followers were killed or apprehended. As long as their charismatic leader--whose eyes, according to one person who met him, were “really not eyes at all, but gimlets which seem to bore into your very soul”--was still at large, he could always assembly another army.

Osama bin Laden is, by all accounts, every bit as magnetic as Villa, and even more dangerous. He may already be dead, but if he’s not, we’d better get him fast, lest he stage a Villa-like resurgence.

The good news is that the U.S. armed forces have staged some daring raids in the past to capture or kill rebel leaders just as elusive as Bin Laden.

In 1915 U.S. Marines occupied Haiti to end a long period of turmoil. Four years of U.S. rule led to accumulated grievances, and in 1919 an attorney named Charlemagne Peralte rallied a rebellion behind the cry “Haiti for the Haitians.” His cacos--a combination of bandits and revolutionaries, named, it was said, after a local bird of prey--soon had much of the north in turmoil.

The job of stopping Peralte fell to Marine Herman Hanneken, who financed his own “caco” band, which pretended to stage attacks on gendarmerie outposts. Hanneken hoped to lure Peralte down from the mountains, but the rebel leader was too smart to leave his camp. So Hanneken went to get him.

He and another Marine, Cpl. William Button, blackened their bodies, and along with some native gendarmes, pretended to be cacos. The ruse worked; they reached Peralte’s camp and in a brief firefight killed him. The war was all but finished that night.

America today could use some “Hard Head” Hannekens--soldiers who can use their imagination to lay unexpected traps for our enemies.

The consequences of not capturing Bin Laden are far worse than the consequences of not capturing Peralte or Villa. Bin Laden has already killed far more Americans than the other revolutionaries combined. If he lives to defy America’s wrath, the consequences may make Sept. 11 seem benign by comparison.

President Bush had it right from the beginning: We need to bring back Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.