As I said in my last post, you will see no ambivalence on this blog about the death of bin Laden. The questions I still have are not about the legitimacy of this surgical strike, but about why it took so long to take him out and why thousands of American soldiers and scores of Iraqis and Afghans had to die for something that could have been achieved right after 9/11. Arab (not only Pakistani or Afghani) regimes should also share the blame in this vicious negligence.  Bin Laden's evil rhetoric and actions have been a cancer for all Muslims, despite the fact that they  appealed only to a fringe group who unfortunately expressed their paranoia in spectacularly destructive ways. And there can be no wavering in the face of destruction and indiscriminate killing. Focusing on these questions, however, is not the most productive thing to do now. Bin Laden's demise presents the United States with a golden opportunity to rethink its Middle East-North Africa policy, particularly as the region itself is going through a remarkable moment of political and social renewal. The most urgent question now is can bin Laden's death usher in a new era in dealing with the Middle East?

The recent pictures released this weekend of bin Laden watching his own tapes on an old small tv screen cluttered with cables made me think of what went through his mind as he was watching millions of Arabs in the street clamoring for social parity, gender equality, democracy; not really his own ideals. It must have been maddening for him to see that no placard or chant mentioned his name. The fact that he hid in a villa in Pakistan all these years is quite symbolic of his isolation from the larger Arab/Muslim public who never bought into his rhetoric. Yes, Americans are still baffled by his hiding skills, but the leader of Al-Qaeda was also hiding from the bitter reality of the Arab street, and the recent uprisings in many countries not only upstaged him but eerily confirmed his own irrelevance and lack of legitimacy. This is what the Obama administration should take away from the recent turn of events in the Middle East. I hope that the decision to finally get serious about the elimination of bin Laden marks also the deliberate severing of an old patronizing and Orientalist American intervention in the region. Arabs too crave free speech, fair elections, and accountable leadership and they don't want to be bombed into acquiring them. We saw how that story went in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the time to turn the page and heat up the rhetoric against dictatorships including those of cozy allies in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, without intervening with military force. This will involve risks and maybe even some short-term chaos as is the case in Egypt, Libya and Syria, but the long-term benefits of a democratic Middle East/North Africa are worth the trouble.

Obama's administration needs to instrumentalize bin Laden's death not only to score political points for 2012, but also to help stabilize a region which has suffered too much from cultural stagnation, political paralysis and international oil greed. The people demonstrating in Arab streets today have already shown a remarkable political maturity and a willingness to build and lead. This is the best blow to deal bin Laden and his politics of fanaticism. They should be strategically cultivated into the partners of tomorrow, if we are serious about a fundamental change in the region. Both the Arab Spring and Obama's military action in Abottabad are only milestones in the fight to puncture what remains of the aura of bin Ladenism, but most importantly, they are milestones in the long path toward real and meaningful change in the Muslim world.