bin Laden Dead

To be a fly on the wall in that room...

Time's 'Red X' cover has been used but four times: to mark the deaths of Hitler, Saddam, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's no.3 and the mastermind of the Iraq insurgency, and now bin Laden.

A poignant scene in NYC.

I was about to go to bed Sunday night, around 10:40ish, when I flipped back over to the Times website to quickly scan headlines and queue up any articles I may have missed that day, to be read the next. What I saw, blared across the top in 48-point font, would keep me up for the next couple of hours. 'Osama bin Laden Dead', it yelled. Wow. I had grown skeptical this day would ever come. Assuredly, bin Laden had already died of exposure in the mountains, or been killed by a drone, or a random bomb, his death in itself an act of defiance, denying America the closure and measure of revenge it desperately craved. But no, bin Laden was alive the whole time, living the past 5 years or so in the same town as Pakistan's equivalent of West Point, in a million dollar, highly secure compound. (Hmmmmm...something is rotten in the state of Pakistan.) 

Here are a few resources to break down the inevitable questions this momentous occasion creates:

- a New Yorker piece seeks to answer some background questions, like where was he found, who was living with him, and what his death means for the future of al-Qaeda. 

- the NYT's newest Op-Ed writer Joe Nocera takes a similar tack, asking if bin Laden's death makes the world safer, in relation to 4 specific areas: The Arab Spring (may help democratic reforms maintain momentum), Afghanistan (may help end quagmire), terrorism (the threat continues, with or without bin Laden), and American-Muslim world relations (still a lot of mistrust on both sides, not helped by NATO campaign in Libya).

- a Washington Post  Op-Ed focuses on an interesting consequence as well - the effect of bin Laden's death on Obama's reelection chances. While Democratic candidates typically are considered weak on defense and foreign affairs while being strong on domestic issues, right now Obama is the opposite, making the upcoming campaign a unique and intriguing one.  

- From Time, here are two detailed accounts on the successful mission, the first describing the scene in D.C. and the second the scene on the ground in Pakistan. Amazingly, intelligence only deemed the likelihood that bin Laden was even in the compound at between 50 and 80%. Good call, Mr. President. I love the confirmation of bin Laden's presence in the compound: "Visual on Geronimo."