The Day the Music Stopped

The real surprise was that Osama was so clearly involved with the day to day planning and operational issues and was not just lying low at all.  Thus his loss is certainly a death blow to Al Qaeda itself although the copy cats will possibly still give us pause for some time.

Certainly everyone who ever provided succor is now on the run and targeted by the USA.  The intelligence grab was really that total and nothing got destroyed before it was retrieved.  One could not have asked for a more complete result and this comes after all the necessary agencies have had a decade to master their task.  Whatever is left of Al Qaeda is today disintegrating on the run as participants lose all contact information and try to lose themselves in order to survive.  It really has to be that desperate.

I held back on commenting in the first few days in order to get some perspective and a sense of how complete the tactical action was.  I can now say that this action was as complete as the elimination of Che Guevara back in the sixties.  Until his ignomious death in a sharp jungle fire fight in Bolivia, the model of the Cuban revolution was an exportable idea to almost every nation in Latin America and Africa.  There were imitators and these were attracting financial support.  All that died in the jungle firefight.

The fact is that impressionable young boys do not want to emulate dead freedom fighters at all.  Their heroes must stay alive to reassure them that it is possible to survive such a nihilist philosophy. The death of Osama and Che ends the delusion.

The remnants will now be hunted down and eliminated rather swiftly.

So yes, global jihad is truly ended even though it will take a lot of time for this to be obvious.

A Crippling Blow to Al-Qaeda

Posted by Matt Gurney on May 9th, 2011 and filed under Daily Mailer, FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/09/a-crippling-blow-to-al-qaeda/

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs last Sunday is a victory for America, the West and the entire free world. The death of bin Laden is a triumph for the victims, both living and dead, of the September 11th attacks, and a sign to the world that America does not forgive or forget crimes committed against its citizens. But the killing of bin Laden promises to be more than just a long-sought, symbolic victory. Though little is known at this early date, according to U.S. officials, documents and digital data captured by the U.S. forces that stormed bin Laden’s compound are already proving enormously invaluable. After the intelligence obtained from the operation is processed, last Sunday’s raid could very well be the greatest victory so far in the war on terror — all considerations of symbolism and justice aside.

The impact of bin Laden’s death, and America’s capture of troves of valuable intelligence, will be measurable in three key areas (not counting the aforementioned moral victory). Once he was found, the SEALs entered not just one man’s hideout, but what U.S. intelligence officials have called “an active command and control center.” In an interview with CNN, White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon compared the documents found in the compound to a “small college library,” a “really extraordinary” find — the largest ever seized in a single anti-terrorist operation.

Already made public was al-Qaeda’s interest in hitting American railway targets on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this year. The intelligence suggested the attack was in the “aspirational” stage — al-Qaeda had decided to move ahead, but did not yet have a plan in place about which trains to derail or what terminals to bomb. The intelligence also confirmed what is already known — for maximum psychological effect, the organization sought to strike out at the West on civic and religious holidays. Recall, for example, the attempt by terrorist Mohamed Osman Mohamad to bomb the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in lovely Portland, Oregon. While Mohamad may have been acting alone, he shared the same fondness for symbolic dates as al-Qaeda.

It will likely not be known for some time what other plots similar to the Portland bombing or the public transit attack have been discovered. And as is often the case with intelligence operations, it is possible that many of the counterintelligence victories achieved from the raid will never be known.

It is equally easy to accept that still further lives will be saved as al-Qaeda goes into damage-control mode and attempts to cope with a catastrophic breach of its operational security. Clearly, given how long it took bin Laden to be found, the organization places a high value on secrecy. If all the various factions of al-Qaeda were to be joined at any one place, it would likely be the top — with bin Laden himself. Furthermore, the raid caught the al-Qaeda leader completely by surprise, without giving him any opportunity to warn his fellow terrorists to seek cover or to destroy evidence. Indeed, two telephone numbers were found sewn into his clothes — one can only imagine how nervous the people at the other end of those telephone lines now are.