Osama bin Laden has been the posterchild of global terrorism since 9/11 (and even before, the attack on USS Cole). He has released videos, rallying the impressionable to his jihad against the infadel West. He has orchestrated attacks, built terrorist networks, and given radical, militant Islam an identity. He has even garnered his own iconography, both among Middle Eastern extremists and among his detractors in the U.S. and elsewhere. His face, the head-covering, long beard and piercing dark eyes, rendered to the point of being a characature, has literally given a face to Islamo-fascist fundamentalism, and jihadi terrorist the world over.

     His death creates a void, one that will either be filled by a new persona to become the figurehead of international terrorism, or more likely, I think that void will instead be allowed to shrink, filled instead by the detritus of time, like a wound scarred over. After all, nearly 10 years after the fateful attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Middle East is embroiled in an unprecedented popular cultural revolution toward a more secular, or at least democratic, socio-political structure. And this revolution is spearheaded by the very youth population that filled the ranks that bin Laden would recruit to fill his ranks.

     However, what's left in the enormous vacuum of his persona is uncertainty. Uncertainty of the future of al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists, uncertainty of retaliation on western countries, and the uncertainty of the ultimate meaning of the man's existence and ultimate death. As with other leaders of violent regimes, they are often as destructive in their death as they were in their lives. Hitler perished in 1945, yet his ignoble legacy lives on in the confused neo-nazi subculture that continues to salute the swastika. In the case of bin Laden, his death will most likely be dismissed as a charade by the U.S. by his supporters. In the U.S., homegrown terrorism may spike as the tragically misguided feel threatened by the effective death of their radical agenda.

    More than the threat of retaliation, will be the dramatic climax of a nearly 10 year long manhunt by our country and the closure that so many needed to move on from the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars. Already, as the news plays out this funeral pageant, an impromtu crowd chants "U.S.A." and sings the national anthem outside the White House. I believe we'll see a great resurgance of the nationalistic pride that characterized our nation after 9/11, and at a time when our divisive nation needs help in its struggle the come together. The collective boost to our national morale couldn't have come at a better time, particularly in the form of the man that many attribute with the act that began our Lost Decade. (Not to be cynical, but it can't hurt Obama's chances for re-election as well.)

    It remains to be seen how the world responds to the death of bin Laden, whether his passing will be a footnote or a headline in the decades to come. What is certain is that his death seems to herald a passing of an era, and all of those that lived through it will feel some significance in the statement, "Osama bin Laden is dead." May global terrorism, and religiously-motivated violence the world over, follow suit.