PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

Bin Laden’s death is stunning news for the United States, for the possible end or restriction of terrorism here and around the world. I believed from 9-11, 2001 that his death would come very soon and it almost happened within months of the attacks on the United States, but bin Laden managed to escape into Pakistan, where he apparently met his death in a CIA operation within recent days. On a personal level, I can’t quite absorb this news and each time I hear a television reporter/anchor say “Osama bin Laden is dead” I am nearly overwhelmed with emotion. Why? Because of the murders he committed of our fellow Americans and because of his desire to use terrorism as a tool around the world. His death also represents a defeat for the idea of terrorism and for the idea that people could commit horrendous acts and get away with it.

I was not in any way convinced that the 9-11 attacks meant the beginning of a massive terrorist campaign against the US and the west, which is one reason I see bin Laden’s death as being even more significant than many commentators on television and elsewhere. His ability to remain alive and at large  sent a message to would be terrorists that they might be able to win or at least sustain a game of terrorism, even while dozens or hundreds of other terrorists and terrorist hopefuls found themselves arrested or imprisoned at Gitmo. Now, his death sends the opposite message. Some who aspire to terrorism might be excited by the idea of a fire fight to the death, but many others would realize they would not like that fate.

Instead of the beginning of an unending wave of terrorism, I have always seen 9-11 as a strategic mistake for bin Laden and his terrorist group. The very “success” of that operation spelled their doom, both by the eventual actions of American power and by their own alienation from the people in the Arab world they had hoped to lead. To my mind, al Queda was conflated into being something more than it actually was by an American government intent on finding a handy replacement for the Cold War as an unending source of funding for military and “security” measures. Now, with the Arab spring in bloom, we can look forward hopefully to the possibility that terrorism will not be a constant in American and world life. Bin Laden’s death is quite timely: the people of Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east have ruled him irrelevant to their future lives. Now, his death has taken him to a place where he can kill no more, forever.

Doug Terry, 5.1.11 (11:29 PM)

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