Bin Laden "The Cranky Old Uncle" of Al Qa'ida?

McClatchy reports that Osama bin Laden was no longer running al-Qa'ida at the time of his death, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

According to the report, "bin Laden was out of touch with the younger generation of Al Qaida commanders, and they often didn't follow his advice during the years he was in hiding in northern Pakistan."

One U.S. official said: "He was like the cranky old uncle that people weren't listening to.  The younger guys had never worked directly with him.  They did not take everything he said as right."

This is not in the least bit surprising.  One of my book's key findings is that the success/failure of strategic manhunts rarely corresponds with the achievement of the strategic objectives that triggered the hunt in the first place.  As I noted in my Weekly Standard piece last month: "The reason for the disparity between the outcome of a manhunt and the achievement of our objective is simple: Pursuing an individual and forcing him to go to ground renders him strategically ineffective and creates space for other actors to step to the fore."  Thus, McClatchy notes in the case of al-Qa'ida, "The computer records [discovered in Abbottabad] also lend credence to long-held beliefs that bin Laden's longtime deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri . . . had been much more involved and important to the group's operations than bin Laden had been in the last several years."

This is an important finding, however, because it suggests that even with bin Laden dead, the war against al-Qa'ida will continue.  Again, in the Weekly Standard piece I argued: "From a strategic standpoint, the successful targeting of an individual is usually less important than the successful targeting of the network that either supports him or will carry on the struggle in his absence."  Consequently, it is imperative for the United States to continue to target al-Qa'ida's key subordinate leaders, and to attack the organization with the equivalent of a counterinsurgency strategy by which we target its finances, fight for Muslim "hearts and minds," and work to eliminate its potential sanctuaries.