Barack Obama and the Goblet of Victory

To be honest, I’m really not that bothered about Osama bin Laden.  After almost a decade, the nutcase with kidney problems has not really been the main focus.  The mourners and the families of the victims of the attack on the Twin Towers will hopefully see this as a form of closure, although judging by some of the interviews conducted by the BBC Correspondent in New York this is not a universal feeling.  Fair enough.  I can imagine it would be very difficult to let go of something like that; when you’re related to one of the victims, the scale will seem so much bigger from that subjective viewpoint.

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but I don’t think it’s going to change the strategy of Al Qaeda.  Considering their fundamental ideology, it may even embolden them.  I think that we need to be careful of a retaliation of some kind; a particularly rattled cell launching a violent vengeance for example.  Bin Laden may have been seen as some sort of leader to a mostly secular and divided terrorist group, but there are so many cells spread out across the Middle East and with links to other groups globally that the War on Terrorism is probably just going to get harder from here on out, if the situation changes at all.

If anything, this is not so much a loss for Al Qaeda, as a win for President Obama.  I get the feeling that the next month or so will truly define his legacy as the President of the United States of America; the immediate reverberations of Osama bin Laden’s death, and the way that he handles the aftermath of the tornados that hit the country over the past few days.  The latter will be especially important considering his response will most likely be compared to the previous administration’s reportedly haphazard response to Hurricane Katrina.

As for the location of where Osama bin Laden was found; well, I expect the US President is resisting the urge to proclaim “I told you so” to the Republican Party, considering I remember him insisting during the election race that dialogue with Pakistan would be needed to further the War on Terrorism.  Stick it to ‘em, Barry.