This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
— Mark Twain
This is how you hunt down a terrorist mastermind. Not with huge invading armies, salvos of Predator drones, torture chambers in secret prisons, and certainly not with Clash of Civilizations rhetoric.
You do it with brains, patience, preparation, cooperation, skill and, at the very last moment, the kind of courage that creates its own good luck.
President Obama struck the proper tone Sunday night when he announced that a special "targeted operation" — since explained to us as a strike by an elite unit of Navy SEALS — raided the hideout of Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida terror network and the author of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, killed him, verified his identity with DNA, and commended his unlamented body to the deep.
The president was serious and somber. No gloating. No "Mission Accomplished." A well-placed reminder, properly citing the identical sentiment expressed by then-President George W. Bush, that the United States is not at war with Islam, but only against a small but deadly group of fanatics.
Other officials, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, went out of their way to note that the threat of Islamist terror has not ended, and that the extreme beliefs and political forces that created al-Qaida in the first place have not been vanquished.
This is what candidate Barack Obama said he would do if elected president. He promised to wind down the war of choice in Iraq, which he correctly saw as the primary impediment to the most important national security matter before us. And that was the destruction of al-Qaida, particularly by the end, through capture or death, of bin Laden as its mastermind, chief fundraiser and seemingly eternal figurehead.
The difference between the long wait and the sudden end of this saga bespeaks many successes, most importantly a vastly improved level of cooperation among various government agencies. Previous efforts by the military, intelligence services and law enforcement agencies around the world had already limited the ability of bin Laden and al-Qaida to do major harm. So much so that, as a pure military target, bin Laden's value had already dimmed significantly.
Still, as an act of legitimate self-defense with real strategic value, the end of bin Laden is a major accomplishment. It puts the world on notice that our fight is with individuals who harm us, not with peoples or religions, and that, as Secretary Clinton said Monday, "You cannot wait us out."