After bin Laden…
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Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai is already calling on America to target Pakistan instead of Afghanistan in the "war on terror", while the world wants to know how bin Laden could have been living inside Pakistan, in a compound less than a kilometer away from the country's top military academy, without anyone knowing.
Pakistan's intelligence body, the ISI, which had long earned the historical mistrust of the US, the UK and its immediate neighbors in the counter-terrorism fight, will continue to be asked many questions, as will the country's political and military leadership.
But in all these there's another important message being sent out by America: that it will not stop at any border in pursuit of its objectives.
In this case, given bin Laden's record and how the world viewed him, no one is yet questioning the fact that the US President approved a military incursion across national borders into a sovereign country to carry out an execution, without informing the country or its military.
Given the mistrust of the Pakistanis by America and the UK, India and Afghanistan, the Americans can easily argue that if they had gone the legal route, the result may have been different.
President Obama followed the 45-minute operation against bin Laden "in real time" from the White House. But he hasn't fully explained why American justice, this time around, didn't mean capturing bin Laden and putting him on trial before a judge and jury -- as with Khalid Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
Whereas President Clinton is now being blamed for not having given permission to kill bin Laden in his time and President George W. Bush declared he wanted bin Laden "Dead or Alive", President Obama made it quite clear he wanted America's Most Wanted Man dead – and without a body.
But while bin Laden's execution will continue to dominate the news for some time, his death does not at all mean that al-Qaida has been decapitated.
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