It has been exactly 10 years since U.S. Seal Team Six shot and killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
I remember that weekend well. On April 30, 2011, I was visiting my Dad in New York City and we made a point of going to the WTC site. At that time, 1 WTC Center was still far from complete and the area generally looked decrepit and forlorn and not without just cause.
The following morning I returned to Boston. That evening I was watching ESPN Sunday Night Baseball which featured the Philadelphia Phillies hosting the New York Mets. During the course of the broadcast, it was announced by Dan Shulman that Osama bin Laden had been killed. This would soon bring about chants of "U.S.A.!!! U.S.A!!!"
Meanwhile, in New York City, thousands crowded on the very ground my Dad and I walked on only a day earlier.
President Obama authorizing bin Laden's execution was a good thing. But killing Osama bin Laden didn't stop Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda affiliate, from launching a terrorist attack at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks killing four Americans. Nor did it stop a terrorist attack near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in April 2013. Nor did it stop the rise of ISIS which beheaded Americans on video in the summer of 2014 and took over much of Iraq and Syria. Mind you, it was President Obama who deemed ISIS "the JV team." I can only hope that President Biden has learned from Obama's mistakes.
Obama may have saw fit to kill bin Laden, but he did not kill radical Islamic terrorism let alone recognize it. Islamic terrorism against the West has largely retreated in recent years. But it is merely biding its time.
The death of Osama bin Laden did produce a short term catharsis and a small measure of satisfaction. Simply put Obama helped win a battle, but he did not win the war.
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