Mood in Washington is jubilant — for now

WASHINGTON: Reaction was swift in Washington regarding news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, which comes as the Obama administration faces key questions about its strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For now, the mood in Washington is jubilant, with both Democrats and Republicans alike hailing the moment.
“I don’t care about the politics,” said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary in former President George W. Bush’s first term. “This is great news for our country.”
“I want to congratulate America’s armed forces and President Obama for a job well done,” said Tim Pawlenty, ex-governor of Minnesota and a frequent critic of the president’s policies. Muslim Americans agree.
“Many people in the Muslim American community welcomed the news with a sense of immerse relief. For a decade Osama Bin Laden has been a figurehead of terror and chaos and has caused much grief for our country and the Muslim American community,” said Haris Tarin, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council DC Office. “The people in the region had already rejected the bankrupt ideology of Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden; we saw this clearly in the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. People chose nonviolence as a means of change. People were not against any country or for any ideology, it was about freedom, human rights and dignity. So I think that Osama Bin Laden had already become irrelevant, but this was a nail in his coffin, both literally and metaphorically,” said Tarin.
Dhafra Al-Azzawi, a senior analyst and cultural adviser at StrategicSocial, a media and research firm with operations in the Middle East and South West Asia, emphasized that Bin Laden was not considered to be the mastermind in Al-Qaeda, nor the “strategic leader,” adding his attraction was his charisma.
Still, Al-Azzawi said it was important to kill him. “On a military level and militant level, his death will affect other structures within Al-Qaeda. There is an Arabic saying that if you are able to kill the leader in battle, you will win the battle.
Muslim law requires burial within 24 hours, and both Tarin and Al-Azzawi agreed that the US made the right call to bury him at sea.
“The military didn’t want to create a repeat of what happened with Saddam Hussein, they wanted to get rid of the body of soon as possible. But I hope the (Obama) administration puts out more details to put to rest many of the conspiracy theories that have come out since the actual events that took place,” said Tarin.
Al-Azzawi agreed there is a need to see the body of Bin Laden. “Why? The only news we’ve heard about the death of Bin Laden is from a non-Muslim entity, so seeing a picture of the body would mean that he really is dead and it’s not just propaganda.
”However, a former Marine commander warned that the global treat of terrorism remains unchanged.
“I don’t think the death of Bin Laden will have much impact on the war on terror, I feel he was made a symbol much greater than his actual worth or value, something to focus our anger upon,” said Col. Mike Anderson, USMC, who led Marines during the initial ground operations in Iraq.
“To think his death will hurt Al-Qaeda minimalizes that organization and puts us in danger of becoming complacent. I think the only impact upon Al Qaeda is that now our focus can be on the whole rather than one piece. He was more valuable to Al-Qaeda as a target than as a leader, because while we searched for him, the true command structure could operate more or less unfettered,” said Anderson.