OK, al-Zawahiri is dead... but al-Qaeda is not. What now?

President Brandon announced yesterday that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by an American drone strike which struck a "safe house" in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was said to be hiding. The Taliban had promised, when they took over Afghanistan after the American bugged out, that the country would no longer be a haven for Islamic terrorists. But they lied, and everyone knew that.

Al-Zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought most of us in the West our first knowledge of al-Qaeda, the organization of Islamic extremists responsible for terrorism in the name of Allah which has killed many 1000s worldwide. Bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in Abbotabad, Pakistan on 2 May 2011, but al-Qaeda lived on, and lives on now. 

A good question to ask, then, is: what happens next? Let's not kid ourselves that the Islamic terrorism will stop. The execution of al-Zawahiri, just though it certainly was, may well have opened up the hornet's nest. Americans would do well to sleep with one eye open.