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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

Bin Laden doesn't have anything to do with leading AQ?

At any rate, none of these new decentralized systems are actually leaderless. The leaders are just hidden. Wikipedia is a good example.

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I think it depends on what you mean by "leading". As I understand it, Bin Laden is a kind of "thought leader" to the AQ movement - sort of how you could say Mick Jagger leads the rock n roll movement (terrible example!). No doubt BL has a lot of influence over AQ and used to be very active, but I very much doubt that he's still involved in deciding who gets hit and how. I suspect he could be removed with no noticeable impact on the movement.

CommanderX may or may not be in a similar position.

I would say Bin Laden is more in the position of giving out "grant money", so to speak, if I understand it correctly. He is more of a financial backer than a "thought leader", and I am certain he is not alone in that position.

He was both, but now he has no funds. Or, at least, no means to get at those funds. Read "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright.

IIRC, the Afghans see/saw him as a hero from the war with the Russians. Apparently there are stories of him bravely manning the front lines, etc. Whether those things are true or not, being a folk hero brings something to the table when one of the major factors to success is recruitment.

They are leaderless in the fact that there is willing cannon fodder to take up 'arms' at will. The action is similar to a 'pick up where others left off mentality'.

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