Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s Lenin, Is Finally Gone
By Richard Miniter, Aug. 3, 2022, WSJ

The killing of al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was America’s biggest counterterrorism victory in years. Like Che Guevara, Zawahiri was a physician who traded saving lives for inspiring others to take them. During medical school and as a young
surgeon in Cairo, he joined a series of radical groups in the 1970s and was jailed for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat. The lesson he learned in prison, according to his autobiography, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,”
was that he wouldn’t have been caught if he could have handpicked his confederates.

He rarely talked about poverty or class oppression, but his autobiography reveals that he studied Lenin’s methods closely. He believed that a small group, a vanguard of enlightened extremists, should direct society while keeping their real aims a
secret, and that people, especially in democracies, had to be stampeded by terror to go in his desired directions, not persuaded by reason and evidence.

He and Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda in 1998. Bin Laden brought money and charisma, Zawahiri a Rolodex of terrorist leaders and fighters in more than 30 countries. He wasn’t only a successor to bin Laden; al Qaeda seems to have been his idea.

His death matters because al Qaeda isn’t an army with easily replaceable generals. Al Qaeda is web of terror groups held together by personal relationships—and Zawahiri was a master of mediating among murderous narcissists, as bin Laden’s captured
correspondence, now housed at West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center, attests.

Much of America’s success in the war on terror came from killing al Qaeda’s middle management—those who recruited, funded, trained and directed attackers. As the organization lost key managers, it lost its ability to carry out catastrophic strikes
like 9/11 or the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

But eliminating al Qaeda’s top leaders, especially bin Laden and Zawahiri, has an enormous effect on fundraising, recruiting and strategic direction. Without Zawahiri to hold it together, al Qaeda will continue to scatter. Its ideology may not die, but
his killing makes it far less appealing.

The manner of Zawahiri’s death also tells us something important about the Biden administration and the American system. Zawahiri’s relatives were tracked in Kabul as early as April, and the home where he was holed up was monitored for months.
Intelligence analysts scrutinized the household movements to find the times when he was likely to be alone. Officials presented a scale-model of the home to President Biden and assured him that a potential strike wouldn’t bring down neighboring
buildings or harm noncombatants. The president insisted on careful planning precisely to avoid civilian harm. It wasn’t a rash decision, but a calibrated and sober one.

Mr. Biden was determined not to cause terror in the name of preventing it. A sharper contrast is hard to imagine.

Mr. Miniter is CEO of Zenger.News and author of “Losing bin Laden.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaedas-lenin-is-finally-gone-zawahiri-counterterrorism-victory-kabul-september-11-kabul-bin-laden-death-11659538212

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