If you don’t get the reference, you should probably have an adult look it up for you.

This is not a tipping point, but perhaps it is a turning point. The message is not that the war is over, but that if you are an enemy of the United States of America, we will get you.

A different context, but the same enemy. The message is that we are in this for the long haul, wobbly politicians or not. The enemy is patient and thinks we are not, that we are easily distracted. Keep in mind that the intelligence that was used to get this guy was developed over five years starting with detainees at the much maligned Guantanamo Bay facility. Five years of sifting through information, interrogating prisoners, watching and waiting for the right opportunity.

Credit goes to the US Navy SEALS as well as the CIA and other intelligence agencies. In addition to killing a vile creature a message was sent to the enemy. They aren’t the only ones that can play the long game and take out an enemy where he thinks he is the most safe.

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

Ronald Reagan

Some credit goes to President George W. Bush because he saw back on September 11, 2001 that we were in for a long war. He said so and  a lot of people didn’t believe. In fact the current President was more than a bit skeptical at one point.

This is a victory, and a significant one. It is not the same as killing the head of a nation with whom we are at war. This is a different kind of war, not against a geographic entity known as a nation, but against a theology that is also a political system. Keep that in mind as you watch the celebrations around the United States.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Winston Churchill