Baghdadi Is Dead But Islamic State Is Not
We’ve seen before that the killing of a leader can make a terrorist group more resilient.
What Islamic State left of the Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul.
Photographer: Zaid al-Obeidi/AFP/Getty Images
The world should greet the reported killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by celebrating America’s exceptional Special Forces, intelligence agents, CIA officers and satellite-surveillance operators. It was a complex and challenging mission flawlessly executed. Unfortunately, it is far from “mission accomplished” in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. The terrorists will continue to pose an extreme danger to Western interests around the world, because they are not dependent on a single charismatic leader. Rather, they are a lethal and venal ideology - structured as a loose network of operatives around the globe.