Scenes of crowds of mostly young people cheering outside the White House even before President Obama’s address should assure the world about the spirit of America.
This spirit was hugely evident, despite the massive deficit, unemployment, and concerns about future American economic competitiveness. Truly the killing of Osama Bin Laden is a great endorsement of the American spirit.
Here are some interesting takeaways from this blog’s perspective based on the news coming through so far.
- A reporter on NBC mentioned that with the killing of Osama Bin Laden the “retailing” of terror would be curtailed worldwide. Sure, Bin Laden did not have a commercial style terror franchising system but he sure was an ideological lodestar for al Qaeda and its many affiliates in over 60 countries of the world.
- Abbotobad is a Pakistani garrison town near the capital Islamabad and the Bin Laden compound is reported about 800 meters from the Pakistan Military Academy. The US special forces were able to get in and out in 40 minutes which is like a pit stop! The extraordinary preparation before the event should continue to inspire managers and businesses interested in improving strategy implementation.
- Don Rumsfeld mentioned that intelligence (ie knowledge) was key and the idea of gathering the intelligence via the courier since Bin Laden had no phones, Internet or TV was a brilliant innovation.