What Does bin Laden's Death Mean Exactly?

What Osama bin Laden's death means for the future of al-Qaeda and America.

The death of Osama bin Laden has quickly turned into a debate on what it means. Paul Cruickshank, CNN's analyst on terrorism, believes the death of bin Laden is significant in the fight against al-Qaeda terrorism, mainly because "there is no one poised to take his place as the group's leader." Bin Laden was considered the linchpin of al-Qaeda and without him, the terrorist group could fracture. Cruickshank says, "There are lots of centrifugal forces within al-Qaeda, people with different ideologies and agendas. Bin Laden was able to unify them. He's irreplaceable. There's no one with his level of charisma, fame or visibility." Without the face of al-Qaeda, its power becomes less relevant not only to its own members, but to the rest of the world.

The New York Times, however, believes there are lots of terrorists out there and they aren't likely to go away anytime soon. "While his death is significant, " Eric Schmitt writes, "it will not end the threat from an increasingly potent and self-reliant string of regional Qaeda affiliates in North Africa and Yemen or from a self-radicalized vanguard here at home." Conceding that al-Qaeda has lost its ideological symbol in bin Laden, there is still a warning that al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers may try to respond violently to avenge his death.

No doubt this is a time for the U.S. to be cautious, but it's also a time to acknowledge a victory. As Time magazine's David von Drehle says, bin Laden's death matters because the U.S. had completed what it had set out to do since that horrific day on Sept. 11, 2001. The completed mission proves that the U.S. can "set a goal and reach it." Using bin Laden's own mathematics, von Drehle writes: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." By remaining free, bin Laden was still considered "strong." But in the end, the weak horse turned out not to be so weak after all, and for a country that was running out of role models, it needed that horse to win the race.