The Zawahiri Era

Michael Scheuer

|

August 24, 2011

ON MAY 2, 2011, al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden left this world for the next, and the American bipartisan political elite—not to mention the U.S.-Euro war-loving quintet made up of Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, UK prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy—leapt off the precipice of simple unreality into the rarefied environs of true fantasy. They are behaving as if bin Laden’s death has ushered in an era in which the United States and the West will at long last get their way in the Muslim world through diktat backed by military force, which, of course, amounts to making our little Muslim brothers just like us . . . Au contraire.