The New Republic on The Death of Osama bin Laden

Just before 10 p.m. on Sunday May 1, 2011, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced that President Obama would deliver a statement to the country later that evening. The address was delayed; reports said that the President was writing his own speech. At 11:35 p.m., speaking to a larger audience than at any other time during his presidency, Obama stated that Osama bin Laden was dead. Earlier that day, in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs had descended on bin Laden’s compound and, after a 40-minute firefight, shot and killed the leader of Al Qaeda. As the celebrations Sunday night at the White House and Ground Zero made clear, the event carried enormous symbolic significance. But there was a substantive impact as well. Over the course of the week that followed, The New Republic marshaled experts, analysts, and the magazine’s own editors to unpack the implications, symbolic and substantive, of bin Laden’s death. Though written in haste, we believe that these pieces will contain lasting insight in the years to come.