We're starting to see some initial analysis about the possible impact of the bin Laden assassination. Some might object to the use of that term, but let's face it--it's a completely accurate way of describing both the mission and the result. Barry Rubin is one of several that articulate the consensus.

Many of these other movements are “smarter” than bin Laden, which is to say they know how to be more tactically flexible. They can smile, and smile and be a villain. They understand far better how to be patient, conceal their plans, use elections, sponsor social services to win supporters, run youth camps to train suicide bombers, take Western aid and assistance, hang out with Western journalists to prove they’re cool guys, produce satellite television networks, and play Western democracies for all they are worth. Oh, and they can still throw bombs with the best of them.

Or, to put it in Iranian terms, bin Laden was the “little Satan,” and the “big Satan,” the real revolutionary Islamist movement, couldn’t care less about his death. Indeed, his death serves a useful purpose. If the West thinks the “war on terror” is over and it’s time to celebrate, all the better. Countries can go on trading with Iran, engaging Syria and Hizballah, and acting as if there’s no big threat in Egypt. All the better to eat you up.

For some time, the administration and the media have been collaborating to divorce Islam from Islamic terror. Even the name for this conflict; "The War on Terror" is a device designed to avoid the complication of saying "The War on Mahdi-Anticipationist Islam". This has been a pretty easy job, since the credentialed but uneducated provincials who make up the journalist class, have no personal or cultural reference for the motivational aspects of religion.

There are reasons, possibly even good ones to do this, but every liar is in danger of succumbing to the attractions of their own lies. This is, in no uncertain terms, a religious war with all the implications that entails.

We all understand the effect 9/11 had on the West, but do we understand the effect it had in Islam? I've been watching videos all morning of people spontaneously gathering in front of the White House and Ground Zero. They are chanting U.S.A! U.S.A!, singing the national anthem and reciting the pledge of allegiance. No one is mystified by this--it's unambiguously hurrah for our side. Yet when we saw a similar, spontaneous expression of joy after 9/11 are we supposed to infer that this was hurrah for Afghanistan? Hurrah for Saudi Arabia? Clearly 9/11 was seen as a victory for political Islam. How were the terrorists described in the Islamosphere? As martyrs--a term pregnant with religious meaning with one important diffference--Christian martyrs suffer death for their beliefs. Islamic martyrs kill for theirs.

The cosmology of Islam admits no free will, and even the common Arabic greetings reflect this--Allah willing, if it be the will of Allah. Nothing happens except that Allah willed it.

What does it mean when Allah wills the death of Usama bin Laden? Usama did not martyr himself in a blaze of glory, taking a crowd of infidels with him. He was slaughtered like a steer. An ignoble and meaningless death for a Jihadi, particular one who had been the scourge of the Great Satan, wounding him greatly and deftly avoiding his vengeance. The stunned silence in Pakistan this morning tells anyone who understands the Islamic cosmology that what they are really mourning is not a man, but the death of faith, the killing of a legend, the extinction of the idea of Allu Ackbar. This is the insight missing from all the predictable commentary we are seeing today.

With one bullet, the spiritual fire that sent so many young men to certain death in the name of Allah, has been extinguished, and no one knows this better than the Mullahs in Iran, the elders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the fugitive remnants of al Qaeda's leadership.

In war, the primary targets are always the supply lines. Cut off reinforcement, food, materiel, and victory is all but assured. In the War of Terror, the true supply line was the religious conviction of divine support signaled by the 'miracle' of 9/11.

The leaders of these groups, more cynical than the cannon-fodder they send to their deaths, will of course gesture and threaten and persevere in the interests of personal power, but they brandish no signs in which to conquer, no relics of remembered miracles. The coming of the Madhi has been pushed into a dim future with diminished power to inspire.

Time of course, will confirm whether I'm correct in my perceptions, but how will you notice what is no longer there? The Muslim Brotherhood will continue to foster sedition and Hamas will fling rockets into Israel, but political ambitions are no match for faith when it comes to building empires.

UPDATE: The Captain seems to understand.