November 4, 2013 | National Review Online

Hakimullah Masud’s End

A U.S. drone strike eliminated Hakimullah Masud, the head of Pakistan’s Taliban, who was linked to the 2009 murders of seven CIA employees in Afghanistan. The notorious radical Islamist was believed to have played a role in the failed Times Square bomb plot in 2010. The U.S. had put a $5 million price tag on his head.

He frequently communicated with BBC, telling a correspondent in October, “Don’t be afraid, we all have to die one day,” apparently referring to the danger of drone strikes.

Masud waged terror campaigns against NATO troops and Pakistani civilians. His terror apparatus was responsible for the deaths of thousands in Pakistan. Put simply, he was a monster who adored death, nihilism, and destruction.

He probably engineered the suicide bombing at the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, a grievous blow against the agency that the film Zero Dark 30 featured.

The targeted killing of Masud is, without question, a powerful setback for the Taliban’s loose terrorism infrastructure in Pakistan. While there has been an enormous amount of justifiable attention devoted to the Islamic heartlands of the Middle East — Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Lebanon — the counterterrorism war against U.S. enemies continues across the greater region.

Let’s hope that the Obama administration pursues the Islamic terrorists behind theBenghazi attack with the same singleminded purpose as the Masud drone strike. The dithering by the Obama administration — and its efforts to shift the blame to an absurd video — squandered valuable time and resources in tracking down the Islamists who executed four Americans on September 11, 2012.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal.

Issues:

Afghanistan Pakistan