The death of Osama bin Laden is important only for its symbolic message, because Bin Laden had long ago ceased to be a figure of any operational importance and become a symbol of the Jihad. As a 'martyr' he will be just as useful. Perhaps even more so.
His death is not a period, but an anticlimactic comma in a run on sentence whose full length still remains unclear. For Americans it's a chance to celebrate the death of the man who became a symbol of Islamic terrorism. For Muslims it means a day of mourning for the death of a new Saladin. No matter how dead he is now, he achieved his goal of becoming a symbol of the Jihad for an Islamic world order. And that Jihad will not be buried in the ground with him.
We have not really been fighting Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda in some time now. Instead we have been fighting the Taliban, Iranian backed militias and local affiliates of Al-Qaeda. Whatever influence the recruits his diminished organization was able to bring to the battlefield in Afghanistan achieved was limited by the centrality of the Iraqi battlefield to the global Jihad. Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda remained a threat, but more as an inspiration, than the globe-spanning network that media reports have made it out to be.
The early years of the War on Terror had cut down its financial links and its safe operational zones. The new wave of Jihad came from organizations that called themselves Al-Qaeda but had their own command centers, their own funding networks and their own agendas. Organizations that like Al-Qaeda in Iraq no longer answered to Bin Laden and did not even listen to his criticisms. Men like Zarqawi whose appetite for bloodshed made even Bin Laden seem like a reasonable moderate by comparison.
We have not really been fighting Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda in some time now. Instead we have been fighting the Taliban, Iranian backed militias and local affiliates of Al-Qaeda. Whatever influence the recruits his diminished organization was able to bring to the battlefield in Afghanistan achieved was limited by the centrality of the Iraqi battlefield to the global Jihad. Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda remained a threat, but more as an inspiration, than the globe-spanning network that media reports have made it out to be.
The early years of the War on Terror had cut down its financial links and its safe operational zones. The new wave of Jihad came from organizations that called themselves Al-Qaeda but had their own command centers, their own funding networks and their own agendas. Organizations that like Al-Qaeda in Iraq no longer answered to Bin Laden and did not even listen to his criticisms. Men like Zarqawi whose appetite for bloodshed made even Bin Laden seem like a reasonable moderate by comparison.
read more: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/05/al-qaedas-next-wave-of-terror.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FromNyToIsraelSultanRevealsTheStoriesBehindTheNews+%28from+NY+to+Israel+Sultan+Reveals+The+Stories+Behind+the+News%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
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