The death of Osama bin Laden is important only for its symbolic message, because Bin Laden had long ago ceased to be a figure of any operational importance and become a symbol of the Jihad. As a 'martyr' he will be just as useful. Perhaps even more so.
His death is not a period, but an anticlimactic comma in a run on sentence whose full length still remains unclear. For Americans it's a chance to celebrate the death of the man who became a symbol of Islamic terrorism. For Muslims it means a day of mourning for the death of a new Saladin. No matter how dead he is now, he achieved his goal of becoming a symbol of the Jihad for an Islamic world order. And that Jihad will not be buried in the ground with him.
