I really hope Beitullah Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban is dead. He’s a disgusting human being who’s responsible for a massive amount of human suffering in Pakistan. Death is a merciful fate, all things considered.

But I’m really, really, really hoping that we don’t deliberately forget some painful lessons about the resiliency of extremist movements in our enthusiasm:

What we’ve learned, at painful cost, over years and years and years, is that the issue isn’t the leader of an extremist movement. It’s the network that supports it, and the conditions that allow it to take root among a population. Groups like the Taliban are very good at replacing leaders. It seems like every time the United States knocks off one or other big name extremist, there’s a rush to forget these lessons in a fit of euphoria. And then the movement replaces him, survives, and adapts, and we’re left wondering what happened.

By the way, there’s an apocryphal anecdote about me and an incident in which I used the word "skullfucking." You can Google it if you’re unfamiliar. I’m asked way, way, way too often about it. So, for the record: you see the blockquote above? That’s what I was expressing during that blown-way-out-of-proportion episode. And I was right, God damn it.