Finally, some good news

New York Times

Well, they finally got the bastard. Osama Bin Laden went down in a hail of bullets, which I'm sure gratified the twisted freak. Foreign Policy has a good timeline of the development of the operation.

It's been believed for some years that Bin Laden no longer had an operational role in Al-Qaeda. The organizational head is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is still at large. There will be no immediate structural damage to Al-Qaeda. However, I don't think we should discount the symbolic power Bin Laden used to command. The fight against organizations like Al-Qaeda is more about images and ideas than it is actual fighting. The reduced organization of recent years has depended on idiotic loners being radicalized through the internet, rather than recruited into the cells of a more traditional terrorist organization. In that context the myth of Osama Bin Laden, the man who had evaded the most powerful nation on earth for ten years, did have a lot of power. It's also why so many loosely-affiliated organizations all over the world took on the name Al-Qaeda, like they were franchisees. They wanted some of the reflected glory of the man who had stood up to the US and lived, at least until today. Now that he's just another dead asshole, we'll see how eager they are to maintain that association.

Hague has ordered UK embassies to review their security as the world braces for Al-Qaeda's response. Bin Laden's death certainly isn't the end of the organization, but hopefully it has dealt a severe blow to the myth of its power.