bin Laden insights from round my neighborhood

1. My buddy Dave sends a picture which can be found here.

2. Joshua at One Free Korea has a short list of observations.

3. My buddy Mike thanks the soldiers, the intelligence workers, and the Obama administration for their work, and offers his own thoughts.

4. My Twitter feed is going nuts with retweets of witty and not-so-witty one-liners. A few that have caught my eye:

Bin laden followed me on twitter - sad to lose another follower.

How sweet would it be if the actual shot was fired by a gay soldier?

So, I guess Democrats DIDN'T want the terrorists to win.

I wish they got the son of a bitch alive.

5. Skippy began live-blogging last night.

6. Malcolm elaborates on the short post he'd initially slapped up last night.

7. Dr. V ponders the question: is Osama bin Laden in hell?

8. Elisson writes a thoughtful post.

9. My friend Nathan sounds a hopeful note.

What I gather, just from reading posts on my own blogroll and one or two major news articles, is that the focus will now be on US/Pakistan relations, since it's becoming obvious that Pakistan was harboring bin Laden. Also, priorities will now ratchet forward to the capture/killing of other terrorist leaders such as al-Zawahiri et al.

One of the debates I had with my friends back in 2003-- when I was arguing against our invasion of Iraq-- involved whether to think of Islamic terrorism as a decentralized network or as a covertly state-sponsored institution. The argument I heard from my right-leaning friends was that, if terrorism is a network, some of its major nodes are states, so it's best to put pressure on those states to undermine their support for terrorist training, protection, etc. After several years of stubborn resistance, I've come around to that view myself: the role of enemy governments is evident. While I still think the Iraq war was and remains a colossally mismanaged mistake, that particular argument-- that states play an integral role in supporting terrorist efforts-- seems sound to me. I mention this because it applies directly to how we proceed with Pakistan. Like so many others, I'll be curious to see where all this leads. My own feeling is that we need to continue to buddy up with India as a strategic partner.


UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens-- who despite his cancer has outlived Osama bin Laden-- writes on the whole What Next? issue.


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