9th May, 2011
President Barack Obama and his administration no doubt richly deserved the victory laps they took recently in the wake of their high stakes success in tracking down and doing away with Osama son of Laden.
I don’t think the terrorism and medieval brand of Islam he championed are gaining support. Indeed, if anything, the world over has over-estimated the terrorist threat posed by Al Qaeda for some time now. I even allowed myself briefly to wonder this morning if we might again be allowed to keep our shoes on in airport security lines. But terror was only a tactic for Osama son of Laden. His larger strategy, as he wrote to Taliban leader Mullah Omar shortly after 9/11, was to force the United States of America to over-reach in its reaction to the terror attacks and thereby to incur “great long-term economic burdens” that would “lead to further economic collapse,” not only in Europe but all over the world which to some extent the late al Qaeda leader successfully accomplished.
Killing Osama son of Laden may not end terrorism in the world, but I believe it will reduce it to some extent because he was regarded as the sole financier and supreme leader of al Qaeda. The news of Osama’s demise is providing only a brief respite from a looming political clash over the United States’ rising debt and how to cap and redu