A good day: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of mortal enemy ISIS, is no more

Gone, gone, gone is the piece of human filth named Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, who led an army determined to subject a swath of the Middle East to a Dark Ages vision of Islam while, using 21st-century technology, inspiring people throughout the rest of the world to murder in the name of ISIS.

Praise the warriors of the U.S. military who closed in on him and the intelligence and counterterrorism agents who discovered exactly where he was and when. President Trump, commander in chief of the military, has also earned his due, just as President Obama did for ordering the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Note that al-Baghdadi, who claimed to believe in Islam, blew himself to pieces, violating the religion's strict prohibition against suicide.

ISIS, like Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks that inject radical Islamist poison into the global bloodstream, is much bigger than a single leader. It lives on in jihadis throughout the region as well as in Americans and Europeans who find something meaningful in its twisted, woman-hating, Christian-hating, Jewhating, ordinary-Muslim-hating ideology.

But the fact that U.S. forces have dispatched al-Baghdadi to a shallow grave is, by any measure, a serious setback to the terrorists' morale, just as was the loss of the so-called territorial caliphate they claimed their faith had promised them.

Of course, Trump found a way to use the moment to try to torment his domestic political rivals, saying he specifically did not alert a bipartisan group of congressional leaders because Democrats were sure to leak, and claiming "Bin Laden was big but this was bigger." In 2012, Trump tweeted, "Stop congratulating Obama for killing Bin Laden. The Navy Seals killed Bin Laden."

We give both Trump and Obama credit for authorizing the missions that killed sworn enemies of America. We hope ISIS is now limping and wheezing and soon dies. We hope, in its death throes, it does not cause more carnage.