ABSTRACT
In February 1998, the terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden again declared war on Americans. Since the late 1990s he had directed and deployed his army of al-Qaeda terrorists to carry out attacks against Americans in the United States and their interests in foreign countries to include: the bombing of US embassies in East Africa (Tanzania and Kenya, August 1998), an attack against the US Navy destroyer, the USS Cole (Yemen, 2000), attacks in the United States culminating with the attack on the Pentagon and the attacks in New York City that destroyed the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 (9/11), and, after the commencement of operations in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003), suicide attacks against soldiers
and marines. 3 These attacks had signifi cant political, economic, social, psychological, and military costs and consequences for the American people. 4 On Sunday night, 1 May 2011, almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks, US Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden with two shots-one in the chest and one to the head-in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A few hours later, President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation, announced to the American people:
Tonight I can report to the American people, and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist
who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memoryhijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky, the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground, black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon, the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania . . .
