Others must be sweating. For all their protestations and excuses, their lies and counterclaims, the Pakistanis are bang to rights. Make no mistake, they are in it up to their necks. There can be little doubt that in the vast data seized during the compound raid, there will be evidence of high-level collusion between Pakistani intelligence and the terrorists. To us, the relationship might seem strange. Yet to the insatiably corrupt and duplicitous Pakistani hierarchs it makes perfect sense: Keep your enemies and clients close, your options open, and maintain a pressure point on the West. Oh, they will be worrying. More so when one considers the United States will have followed”€”and followed up”€”every vehicle coming and going over the past months from that compound. Pakistan knows that we know. It will reap the whirlwind.

I have never shied from supporting the occasional use of extrajudicial executions against operational terrorists. Due process is for those captured in Europe or America’s sanitized conditions. In tribal areas, mountainous regions, close-quarter battle, or locales ruled by pariah regimes and warlords, more robust measures are needed. There is little point in being squeamish or sensitive. It is a dirty game against a difficult enemy. As Special Forces ops in Afghanistan have demonstrated, targeted killings can have an effect. Drone attacks have winnowed numerous militants in Pakistan. A terrorist organization denuded of its leadership, relying on greener talent and forever looking over its shoulder, is in constant flux and therefore less effective. We should ever attempt to keep it that way.

There will be new bogeymen and future threats. The assassination of a single terrorist offers no panacea. View it instead as a holding operation, a containment exercise. Obama is right to claim that bin Laden’s death shows America does not forget and will eventually get its man. For all those believing the West was weak and lacking backbone, the dramatic raid was the riposte. Tackling bin Laden was the logical and obvious next step, the iced turban on the cake.

Terrorists make their choice and take their chance. It is they who don the suicide vests and deliberately target civilians and destroy rather than build; it is they whose raison d”€™Ãªtre is to spread misery and fear. If their wish is to reach paradise through violence, we are honor-bound to facilitate their premature entry.

One illustrious former British politician drily observed that bin Laden was a fool. Had he sent his family ahead of him to Britain, he would have been able to claim residency and welfare here under the Human Rights Act. After all, there are many jihadist sympathizers and fellow travelers among Europe’s Asian Muslims. But those sympathizers should beware. The world does not want them, we do not need them, and the nascent Arab Spring is flowering without them. Bin Laden is gone and while in New York City next week, I will pay my respects to the thousands of innocents he killed. Let us spit on his hateful memory and move on.

All together now:

The brains blew out/
But the legend never did….