Bin Laden: Hey, Hey Goodbye
Posted by Lawrence Wright
The New Yorker
Bin Laden is dead but is Al Qaeda? Certainly, his terror organization could not die without its leader being killed or captured. In the last few months it was fashionable to say that bin Laden was irrelevant. But the fact that he was able to evade justice since 1998, when he authorized the bombings of the two American embassies in East Africa, emboldened terrorists all over the globe.
Al Qaeda will have a difficult time finding a successor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, has few of the qualities that would make for a successful leader. He’s anti-charismatic. He ran his own Egyptian terror organization, al-Jihad, into the ground. Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric now underground in Yemen, will continue to cause trouble, but it is unlikely that he will ever gain the standing of his Saudi predecessor.
The fact that bin Laden was found in a compound in a wealthy retirement community populated in large part by former Pakistani military officers raises dire questions about the relationship of the Pakistani army and its intelligence community to radical Islamic terrorists. For the past decade, as America has poured billions into a country where about one in a hundred citizens pays income taxes, the Pakistani military/intelligence complex has gone into the looking-for-bin-Laden business. Now, they are out of business. If it is true that Pakistani intelligence was helpful in locating bin Laden, and kept that matter secret, then we can begin to sort out our fraught relationship with that troubled country on a more equitable, trusting basis. If that turns out not to be the case, then there will be a dreadful reckoning to come.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/bin-laden-hey-hey-goodbye.html
The New Yorker
Bin Laden is dead but is Al Qaeda? Certainly, his terror organization could not die without its leader being killed or captured. In the last few months it was fashionable to say that bin Laden was irrelevant. But the fact that he was able to evade justice since 1998, when he authorized the bombings of the two American embassies in East Africa, emboldened terrorists all over the globe.
Al Qaeda will have a difficult time finding a successor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, has few of the qualities that would make for a successful leader. He’s anti-charismatic. He ran his own Egyptian terror organization, al-Jihad, into the ground. Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric now underground in Yemen, will continue to cause trouble, but it is unlikely that he will ever gain the standing of his Saudi predecessor.
The fact that bin Laden was found in a compound in a wealthy retirement community populated in large part by former Pakistani military officers raises dire questions about the relationship of the Pakistani army and its intelligence community to radical Islamic terrorists. For the past decade, as America has poured billions into a country where about one in a hundred citizens pays income taxes, the Pakistani military/intelligence complex has gone into the looking-for-bin-Laden business. Now, they are out of business. If it is true that Pakistani intelligence was helpful in locating bin Laden, and kept that matter secret, then we can begin to sort out our fraught relationship with that troubled country on a more equitable, trusting basis. If that turns out not to be the case, then there will be a dreadful reckoning to come.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/bin-laden-hey-hey-goodbye.html
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