Aftershocks of Osama

[ydoaPs]

Barring the Zombie Apocalypse, I think our threat from Osama is over. While the threat from Al Qaeda is not over, the loss of Osama does present us with strategic opportunity. There is now a power vacuum that could result in anything from destabilization to a somewhat of a civil war within the group. It seems that the end of this mission is near and we can soon bring our troops home and have one less war to pay for.

 

Politically, it probably resulted in an increase in Obama's approval rating and provides him with a campaign point

 

Aside from the power vacuum, what else has changed?.

[rktpro]

The relationship between USA and Pakistan.

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf called Osama bin Laden's death on Monday a "positive step" but criticized the United States for launching the raid on the al Qaeda leader within his country's borders.

 

[lemur]

It seems that the end of this mission is near and we can soon bring our troops home and have one less war to pay for.

I don't know if you've noticed but there seems to be a lot of potential for military involvement brewing around the Mediterranean. Do you honestly think that transnational military presence will ever end? If nothing else, training exercises will probably always be conducted among allied regions.

[padren]

Aside from the power vacuum, what else has changed?.

I think even if new leadership is completely accepted and there is no power vacuum, we'll probably see a combination of desertion and more attempted high profile attacks. Osama was trying to "hit and hide" and never got comfortable enough with his "hiding" in the last ten years to commit to another serious state-side "hit" beyond the (relatively) small scale scares which probably had little to do with Osama anyway.

 

That strategy isn't going to look that good again anytime soon, and that will force them to try new approaches. I'm not sure how many people Al Qaeda has now that go as far back as the Soviet invasion, and even more how many of those who do actually have the attention for detail and patience that Osama had.

 

 

I suspect that Al Qaeda will get more aggressive while loosing a number of members to desertion, but the heightened aggression will arise from a lack of experience, patience, fear of appearing weak, and because it's now known fact that hiding is not safe, just safer than active aggressive operations. Once they expose themselves further they'll probably get cut down even worse, and only a small fraction will remain to reattempt Osama's "hide and hit" policy with most of their resources going into hiding.

 

 

tl;dr: Al Qaeda will have a short period of dramatically heightened but equally ineffective activity, followed by near-disintegration into irrelevancy.

 

Side note:

 

Obama may let the "deathers" stew for a while, then clear the soldiers who conducted the op for news circuit interviews - personally I'd love to see some talking heads preaching "But all we have is Obama's word he's dead!" quibble with a US special forces soldier who was there and was effectively just called a liar. I haven't been following too closely so I am not sure if any of the main birther players have gone full "deather" or not yet, but if they do, I do hope those interviews happen.

[Stefan-CoA]

I don't think much will change. I can't remember having seen a video where Osama claimed responsibility for anything in a long time. It'll be business as usual for terrorists all over the world