Not a Fatal Blow Against al Qaeda

Jeffrey Goldberg May 2 2011, 10:40 AM ET

Max Boot takes a deep breath and calmly analyzes the situation:

The death of Osama bin Laden--richly deserved, long delayed--is certainly cause for celebration. But let's not get carried away. The organization he built, al Qaeda, is likely resilient enough to continue without him. Certainly many of its regional affiliates, from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, operated largely independently of their titular leader and will continue to do so. Then there are the numerous other Islamist terrorist organizations, such as Lashkar e Taiba and the Pakistani Taliban, which did not pledge even formal allegiance to "Emir" Osama. His death is an important symbolic blow against the Islamist terrorist network but not a fatal one; at most it might lead to the decline of Al Qaeda and the rise of other, competing organizations.

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Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, Goldberg also writes the magazine's advice column. More

Before joining The Atlantic in 2007, Goldberg was a Middle East correspondent, and the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. Previously, he served as a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He has also written for the Jewish Daily Forward, and was a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

His book Prisoners was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Progressive, Washingtonian magazine, and Playboy. Goldberg rthe recipient of the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism. He is also the winner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists prize for best international investigative journalist; the Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting; and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism. He is also the recipient of 2005's Anti-Defamation League Daniel Pearl Prize.

In 2001, Goldberg was appointed the Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation, and in 2002 he became a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.