Shadowhog, you have just won the interwebz.
Also, as much as it is a great "milestone", it won't matter much his death since they can just put the second in-command as their new leader.
True, it's a step in the right direction, but still...
More than that, it will hardly make a dent in al-Qaeda's morale. Remember, from their point of view, he was courageously fighting in defense of Islam and went down as a martyr. They surely believe that bin Laden is currently sitting beside God, being accorded the highest honors a mortal man can receive.
Consider, by contrast, what would happen if al-Qaeda operatives assassinated Barack Obama. The United States would be shaken beyond imagination. Granted, America is also influenced heavily by religious belief (in this case, predominantly Christianity), but we are still far more secularized than al-Qaeda could ever possibly be, particularly in the way we view military conflicts. Though the notion that a fallen leader went to heaven would be accepted by a large swathe of the population, it would not reaffirm America's conviction of righteousness in the same way that it would for al-Qaeda.
Indeed, the U.S. government has jumped through hoops to skirt any and all religious debate in its treatment of the War on Terror. This is actually to our cost, because religion is at heart of the entire conflict and we are willfully ignoring the real issue out of a fetish for religious tolerance. In his speech about the death of bin Laden, Obama stated, "The United States is not at war with Islam". I wonder whether Obama genuinely believes this, or merely knows that telling the truth will trash his approval ratings. The fact is, if it wasn't for Islam, the rationale for the actions of groups such as al-Qaeda could not possibly exist.
Osama bin Laden was a highly educated, wealthy man who dreamed of a better world. He defined a better world through the literal word of the Qur'an...and what happened next could hardly have been a surprise. He did not "twist" or "misinterpret" the tenets of his religion in the slightest; the texts of Islam are crammed full of impossible-to-misconstrue calls for conquest, domination, subjugation, and slaughter. There are millions of Muslims who practice their religion peaceably, but they do so in violation of their own faith, blending their traditions with an incompatible view of secular tolerance.
This last part is crucial. Being at war with Islam doesn't have to mean (and wherever possible,
should not mean) being at war with those who practice it. This is how tolerance must manifest itself. Reasoning with people must always be our first stage of attack. Physical violence must only be committed if our enemies will not be reasoned with.
I consider it the fault of America's own religious tendencies that we have failed to recognize the War on Terror for what it truly is. Our reverence for faith in general makes it hard for us to accept any connection between violence from people of faith and the faith itself. We prefer to blame the Middle East's problems on anything but religion, despite religion being the obvious culprit. We have two primary scapegoats that we like to blame: economic and political sluggishness, and righteous anger towards Western imperialism. Neither reason stands up well to scrutiny at all, and I will explain why individually.
First, it makes no sense to attribute suicide bombings and terrorist groups to political or economic shortcomings, because there are all kinds of places in the world that suffer from these problems
without becoming terrorist hot spots. Furthermore, terrorists tend to come from the middle and upper classes, not the lower classes.
Second, the Middle East has little quarrel with us in terms of imperialism. While it is clear that Western civilization is guilty of a great many atrocities, most of which have gone unpunished, what have we done to arouse the ire of places like Iran? Western imperialism has been far more damaging to Central and South America, southeast Asia, and southern Africa. True, a few parts of the Middle East have been colonized at some point, but as a whole the region has remained relatively unharmed by the rampages the Western world have made across the globe.
The actions of Middle Eastern terrorists only make sense through a religious perspective. They view the West as a civilization of decadent unbelievers whose luxury and prosperity belong in the hands of the righteous. And they will continue to fight until they have either perished as martyrs or claimed the entire planet in the name of their faith. The result of all of this is that, unless bin Laden was an invaluable tactician whose absence will compromise the plans of his operatives, his death will do nothing to deter terrorist groups. Al-Qaeda will consider his death a moral victory, and there's no getting around that.
