"2001年9月11日，星期二，美国东部的破晓时分，气温适宜，天空几乎没有一丝云霾。数以百万计的人正准备去上班。他们有的走向双塔，那是纽约世贸中心的标志性建筑；还有的人前往位于弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿的五角大楼……"
《9/11委员会报告》就是这样开头的，这是美国政府对美国历史上最糟糕的恐怖主义袭击进行的官方调查。那天有近3000人被害。双塔不复存在。美国人心灵深处受的创伤如此严重，以至于"9/11"成了英语中的一个永久固定用法。从这个角度上说，美国、美国的友邦以及美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)绝对有权利对奥萨马•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)之死感到振奋。经过9年半的追捕，美军终于击毙了毫无悔意的9/11袭击主谋。
此次行动的成功，证明了美国无比的军事影响力、令人敬畏的情报能力、以及（对一个常常被怀疑注意力不能持久、难以执行长期国策的国家而言）追查其最为行踪不定之敌的坚定决心。然而，击毙本•拉登还给奥巴马政府带来了一个黄金机遇，使其能够推进奥巴马在2009年上任时启动的重塑美国外交政策的进程。
9/11袭击促使奥巴马的前任乔治•W•布什(George W. Bush)先后对阿富汗和伊拉克发动成本极其高昂的入侵。这两场战争都未能按最初的计划推进，对伊拉克的占领尤其具有争议性。布什把"反恐战争"列为美国战略的基石，对牵涉到的各项议题过度简单化，坚称在打击恐怖主义的斗争中，别的国家应当"要么站在我们这边，要么就是与我们作对"。
既然本•拉登已死，奥巴马现在有机会推动与伊斯兰世界和解的事业。他在2009年6月在开罗爱资哈尔大学(al-Azhar University)发表里程碑式演说时，首次界定了这项事业。击毙本•拉登正值阿拉伯世界出现如火如荼的政治觉醒，这场风波始于去年12月的突尼斯，然后扩散至埃及、利比亚、叙利亚、巴林、也门等国家。本•拉登在20多年前创立的"基地"恐怖组织迄今在阿拉伯之春中没有扮演上什么角色。该组织的主旨——对西方目标发起无情的暴力攻击——在上述国家的社会基本上没有号召力，在这些社会，最让人强烈不满的问题是政治压迫、不公正、官员腐败、年轻人失业以及贫穷。美国及其盟国为了保持中东和北非的稳定，在太长的时间里支撑着该地区的独裁者。本•拉登之死和"基地"组织意识形态影响力的下降，给美国带来了支持该地区进步力量追求政治多元化和人权的强大激励。
在美国准备在未来几年撤出阿富汗之际，本•拉登之死还可能给美国带来一些新的选择。当初发动阿富汗战争的理由是，阿富汗的塔利班为"基地"组织及其领导人提供了庇护所。近10年来，北约部队似乎把更多时间花在把阿富汗转变为一个管治有方的现代化国家上，而不是在执行保卫西方国家及其公民不受袭击这一主要任务。美国及其盟友应当把本•拉登之死视为一个机遇，与塔利班代表加强接触，为北约部队在今后4年分阶段撤出创造条件。在阿富汗的军事任务，再也不能被说成关系到西方文明的存亡。
与此形成反差的是，本•拉登被发现住在巴基斯坦阿伯塔巴德(Abbottabad)市，就在该国军事学院的眼皮底下，这个事实引发一些令人不安的问题。巴基斯坦情报部门竟然无人知道本•拉登的藏身之地，这似乎是不可想象的。这一点突显该国安全机构对伊斯兰极端主义的支持程度。美国-巴基斯坦关系近期出现的摩擦不太可能很快消失。
就奥巴马的政治前景而言，对本•拉登被击毙作过度解读是不明智的。即便是第一次海湾战争的胜利，也未能保障老布什(George Bush)在1992年获得连任。但是，外交和安全政策的成功本身是值得庆贺的。一个没有本•拉登的世界，绝对是一个更好、更安全的世界。
译者/和风
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001038375
"Tuesday September 11 2001 dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. Millions of men and women readied themselves for work. Some made their way to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Others went to Arlington, Virginia, to the Pentagon . . . "
So begins the 9/11 Commission report, the US government's official investigation into the worst terrorist attacks in US history. Almost 3,000 people were killed on that day. The Twin Towers are no more. So grave were the wounds to the American psyche that the phrase 9/11 became a permanent fixture of the English language. It follows that the US, its friends and Barack Obama, its president, have every right to feel lifted by the news that, after a manhunt lasting nine-and-a-half years, US forces have finally killed Osama bin Laden, the unrepentant mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
The success of the operation testifies to America's unmatched military reach, its formidable intelligence capabilities and – for a country often suspected of having too short an attention span to pursue long-term national goals – its grim determination to track down its most elusive enemies. Yet bin Laden's elimination also offers the Obama administration a golden opportunity to press ahead with the reshaping of US foreign policy on which the president embarked upon taking office in 2009.
The 9/11 attacks prompted George W. Bush, Mr Obama's predecessor, to launch two immensely expensive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither went according to plan, and the occupation of Iraq proved exceptionally controversial. Having made "the war on terror" the cornerstone of US strategy, Mr Bush greatly over-simplified the issues at stake by insisting that other nations should be either "with us or against us" in the struggle against terrorism.
Now that bin Laden is dead, Mr Obama has a chance to advance the cause of reconciliation with the Islamic world which he first defined in a landmark speech at Cairo's al-Azhar university in June 2009. For bin Laden's death coincides with the momentous political awakening of the Arab world that started in Tunisia last December and then spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and beyond. Al-Qaeda, the terrorist network that bin Laden founded more than 20 years ago, has played little part in the Arab spring. The group's message of pitiless violence against western targets has fallen largely on deaf ears in societies where the burning grievances are political repression, injustice, official corruption, youth unemployment and poverty. For too long, the US and its allies propped up autocrats for the sake of stability in the Middle East and north Africa. Bin Laden's demise and the decline of al-Qaeda's ideological influence create a powerful incentive for the US to support the region's progressive forces in their quest for political pluralism and human rights.
Bin Laden's death may also unlock new options for the US as it prepares to disengage from Afghanistan over coming years. The original justification for the war was that the Afghan Taliban provided a shelter for al-Qaeda and its leader. Almost 10 years later, it seems as if Nato's forces are spending more time on an effort to turn Afghanistan into a modern, well-governed state than on the primary task of defending western countries and their citizens from attack. The US and its allies should treat bin Laden's death as an opportunity to step up contacts with Taliban representatives with a view to a phased withdrawal of Nato forces over the next four years. No longer can it be argued that the military mission in Afghanistan is a matter of life and death for western civilisation.
By contrast, the fact that bin Laden was discovered to be living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, a short distance from the nation's military academy, raises disturbing questions. It appears inconceivable that no one in Pakistani intelligence knew of bin Laden's hide-out. This underlines the degree of support for Islamist extremism in the nation's security apparatus. Recent frictions in the US-Pakistani relationship are unlikely to disappear quickly.
As for Mr Obama's political prospects, it is unwise to read too much into the killing of bin Laden. Even victory in the first Gulf war was not enough to secure the elder George Bush re-election in 1992. But foreign and security policy successes deserve to be celebrated in their own right. A world without bin Laden is emphatically a safer and better place.
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