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Step back from the bellicose statements issued by the Pakistani army and foreign ministry after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the eruption of prayers and stray protests on behalf of the slain terrorist, and you’ll find an outpouring of thoughtful analysis by some of the country’s leading public intellectuals.

In an essay in the New Republic, reprinted in the delightfully named Goatmilk blog, my former colleague Ahmed Rashid sums up the lesson that ought to be learned:

What Pakistanis desperately need is a new narrative by their leaders—a narrative that does not blame the evergreen troika of India, the United States, and Israel for all of the country’s ills, that breaks the old habit of blaming outsiders and instead looks at itself more honestly and more transparently. Pakistanis as a nation seem incapable of self-analysis, of apportioning blame according to logic and reason rather than emotion.

In Dawn, the country’s leading English newspaper, Cyril Almeida, one of the few non-Muslims of any prominence in Pakistan, strikes a similar note:

Where do we go from here as a country?

As long as national security and foreign policy remain in the hands of a cabal of generals—unaccountable and untouchable, a law unto themselves, and in thrall to their own irrational logic—what future can this country have? Surely, not much of a future.

And here’s Pervez Hoodbhoy, perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of radical Islam.

Bin Laden’s death should be regarded as a transformational moment by Pakistan and its military. It is time to dispense with the Musharraf-era cat and mouse games. We must repudiate the current policy of verbally condemning jihadism—and actually fighting it in some places—but secretly supporting it in other places. Until the establishment firmly resolves that it shall not support armed and violent non-state actors of any persuasion— including the Lashkar-e-Taiba—Pakistan will remain in interminable conflict both with itself and with the world.

Ayesha Siddiqa, whose Military Inc. is the definitive work on the army’s vast business interests, weighs in with a typically pugnacious op-ed:

It is the first time after 1972 that the civilian government has an opportunity to question the unlimited powers of the defence establishment….The fact is that if the political forces won’t do it now, they may never get another opportunity again.

For my money, Pakistan’s beleaguered English-speaking elites are among the bravest people in the subcontinent, willing to speak truth to power, whether military or clerical, in a land where this can carry deadly consequences.

And though it would be foolish to exaggerate their influence—the salons of Lahore and Karachi have little sway over either the masses or the generals—they nonetheless offer a glimmer of hope for the country’s future. President Obama should not squander this opportunity to press for real change in Pakistan along the lines that the most thoughtful voices in that country suggest.

It is a little-known fact that the U.S. government continues to employ waterboarding. But we don’t waterboard terrorists anymore; we only waterboard … Navy SEALs.

Today, President Obama travelled to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to meet with some of those waterboarding victims. CNN reports:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met privately Friday afternoon with members of the military team responsible for conducting the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that Obama and Biden spoke with “special operators” involved in the mission.

The president and vice president met with members of Navy SEAL Team 6 at Fort Campbell—home to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the group that operated the helicopters used in the raid.

Obama and Biden thanked the commandos and were briefed on the operation by the unit members who conducted it, according to a White House official.

No word on whether the president asked members of the unit whether they thought waterboarding was torture. He most likely would not have liked the answer. CNN also reports:

Obama awarded a Presidential Unit Citation to the units involved in the mission, the official said. The citation is the highest such honor that can be given to a military unit.

It is a well-deserved honor. Let’s see if the president does the same for the CIA interrogators who got the intelligence that made last Sunday’s raid possible.

John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism coordinator, told ABC television on Tuesday that Pakistan had launched an internal investigation to determine whether any individuals within the government or intelligence service (ISI) were involved in sheltering Osama bin Laden in that country’s military heartland. Brennan said he was certain that the “Pakistani officials want to get to the bottom of this, and we’re working closely with them to help them in this investigation.” Pakistan, he emphasized, was a “strong counterterrorism partner.”

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Check out the New York Times’s Room for Debate page with two AEIers weighing in.

Here’s Fred Kagan with Kim Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War:

The very difficulty we encountered in finding and killing Bin Laden should warn us against the danger of seeing in such operations a magical, low-cost, small-footprint silver bullet for the problems we face.

Michael Rubin follows:

That Bin Laden survived almost 10 years after his attacks on New York and Washington should be an indictment of both parties and, more broadly, the American way of diplomacy.

Read it all.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces outside Islamabad is a milestone in the war on terrorism and will be a tremendous psychological blow to al Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. Bin Laden was an iconic figure not only for al Qaeda but also for a cluster of terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, such as the Haqqani group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and the Punjabi Taliban.

Despite bin Laden’s close ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, however, his death will not affect the war in Afghanistan in the short term. Quite the contrary, we will see more intense fighting in the country in the months ahead. On May 1, the Taliban announced their long-awaited spring offensive, and two suicide attacks killed more than a dozen people in eastern Paktika and Ghazni provinces the next day. More spectacular attacks and suicide bombings will follow soon. On Monday, one Taliban commander said the group would soon launch an operation called Bader “to avenge the killing of Osama.”

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This morning, when I went out to get coffee and a paper after a late night celebrating the demise of Osama bin Laden, the lady behind the counter pointed to the front-page picture of the late al Qaeda leader and said: “I guess the war is finally over.” Millions of Americans are saying the same thing today. On Fox News, a Marine at Camp Pendleton said he was relieved at bin Laden’s death because “we’re all ready for this war to be over.” And on CNN last night, Peter Bergen declared: “Killing Bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.”

No, we can’t. The temptation to see this as the culmination of a long struggle is understandable. It has been nearly ten years since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The war on terror is the longest military struggle in our nation’s history, and one that is unlike any our nation faced before. In the past, America’s wars ended with a dramatic event—a surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri, or allied armies marching into Berlin. Bin Laden’s death feels to many like that kind of event. It is not. Ayman Zawahiri will not respond to the killing of Osama bin Laden by packing it in and returning to his medical practice.

Neither will Adanan Shukrijuma—an American citizen who currently holds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s former position as al Qaeda’s operational commander—give up jihad and retire. Neither will Anwar al-Awlaki or the other leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who have twice nearly blown up planes over the United States, give up the fight and go quietly into the night. These terrorists will do everything in their power to avenge the death of their fallen leader. And they are convinced that best way they can do so is by repeating the destruction he wreaked on America. They will seek to mark tenth anniversary of 9/11 in spectacular fashion. We had better be ready.

Vice President Cheney put it well this morning when he said: “Though bin Laden is dead, the war goes on. We must remain vigilant, especially now, and we must continue to support our men and women in uniform who are fighting on the front lines of this war every day.”

So let us revel in a great military victory today. But those celebrating in Times Square and other parts of America today should remember this is not V-J Day. As we dance in the streets, the enemy is regrouping and planning the next attack. Which means that, tomorrow, we need to get back to work and stop them.

Cross-posted from NRO.

Why did the United States bury bin Laden’s body at sea?

There seem to be two primary reasons:

— Muslim law stipulates that bodies must be buried within 24 hours, preferably before the sun sets that day.

— A burial site could have turned into a shrine for al-Qaeda sympathizers.

Government officials emphasized the sensitivity toward Islamic practice: “We are ensuring that it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition,” said an American official. “This is something that we take very seriously. And so therefore this is being handled in an appropriate manner.”

But it seems that neither reason necessitated the burial at sea. An umarked grave somewhere would not have turned into a shrine, and the burial at sea actually contradicts Muslim burial law, according to most opinions.

According to the Authentic Step by Step Illustrated Janazah [Funeral] Guide, by Mohamed Ebrahim Siala, the burial (Al-Dafin) is ideally supposed to be done in the city where one lived, as soon as possible after death. After washing and shrouding, the body should rest in a dirt grave on its right side, with the face toward the Qiblah (facing Meccah). This is obviously impossible for a body buried at sea.

Fox News reported that bin Laden’s body was wrapped and washed, and the Janazah prayers said in accordance with Islamic law.

“They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam,” said Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai’s grand mufti. “If the family does not want him, it’s really simple in Islam: You dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that’s it … Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them.”

The only cases where burial at sea could be permissible are if death occurs on a ship and there is no way to prevent decay until landfall, or if an enemy is looking to desecrate the grave of the deceased.

It has also been suggested that there were no countries willing to accept him, but it should not have been too difficult to find a secret place for an unmarked grave in the United States or one of its territories.

A curious, but creative, solution to a complex problem.

Today is a day to celebrate a major victory in the war on terror. It is also a day to remember the more than 3,000 people killed on Osama bin Laden’s orders in the 9/11 attack, the attacks on our embassies in East Africa, the U.S.S. Cole and other acts of terror.

In today’s Washington Post, I tell the story of one of those individuals—a Navy intelligence officer named Dan Shanower, who died a few corridors down from me in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, on the first battlefield of the war on terror.