Buried and over?

I guess you all know by now that Osama Bin Laden is dead. But what does his death actually mean?

To many Americans, Osama's death meant sweet revenge and a massive blow to terrorism. After all, he is the one alleged to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I had actually forgotten all about Osama Bin Laden. In fact, I believe, many Americans too had forgotten like me. He had eluded U.S. forces for over nine years resting inside a bungalow in Pakistan while the troops were hunting for him in caves and desert. Oh, the irony.

But his death made me think, what does this mean to the other side? I mean, he was the face of the terrorist resistance in the Muslim world. He was a success too. Think about it, the U.S. fought a long and very expensive war costing trillions of dollars that spanned Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. It was a lot easier and cheaper to capture Saddam Hussein than it was to get Osama Bin Laden. More importantly, if you explore Osama's main motive, some would actually agree that he succeeded. The idea was to hurt the U.S. morally and financially. Well it did take nine years to capture him (morally) and the economy US spent trillions of dollars trying to locate him.

That's a lot of damage from just one man. I guess that’s why they refer to him as "no ordinary man". Lets not forget he was on the FBI's most wanted list. Lets not be naive and assume that terrorism is dead with Osama's death, but, yes, it is a huge blow. The poster child is dead. It sends a message that no matter where you hide, we'll find you.

I'm sure there is some resentment in the Muslim world about U.S. involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict and I believe, Osama, in a way, may have have provided some hope for a change. And that hope is fading now.

Lets talk about Pakistan for a minute. Here we have a situation where the U.S. needs Pakistan to setup a base for operations in Afghanistan so that U.S. forces can capture the Taliban. However, Pakistan is in bed with the Taliban and end-up shielding Osama. I wouldn't be surprised if U.S. intelligence already knew all this but were not able to do much because of Pakistan's consistent denials on the subject.