Osama is Dead

As usual, Night Writer came up with the right sentiment, via Mitch's blog:

‎”I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” – Mark Twain

That's about where I am on this one. A few thoughts:

I don't begrudge the President taking a victory lap last night. Osama bin Laden assumed room temperature because the President decided, despite some campaign rhetoric to the contrary, to maintain a sufficient amount of force in the field to reach and kill bin Laden. He took plenty of heat for this from his political allies but he stayed the course. That took courage and it would be churlish to pretend otherwise.

We do have to think about Pakistan's role in this matter. We'll find out more in the coming days, but early reports indicate that bin Laden may have been in the location he was found for rather a long time. The city where he was living, Abbottabad, is a military town, not a cave or a camp in the wilderness. It's long been clear that Pakistan is something other than an ally, but this revelation is even more troubling.

Bin Laden may be dead, but I wouldn't assume that Al Qaida is dead, nor are the larger movements in the Muslim world that Al Qaida commandeered for its own perverse purpose. Zawahiri is still at large. This isn't going to be over in our lifetimes. How we choose to deal with the Muslim world may change now and we should certainly think about whether we need to recalibrate our response. But we shouldn't assume that because the leader is gone, the movement dies with him.