By all indications, Zawahiri got cocky. When the Taliban ruled Kabul in the late ’90s, bin Laden and Zawahiri could live fairly openly. Zawahiri might have suspected that those old days had returned, and that the Taliban’s agreement with the United States, signed in Doha, Qatar, last year, would secure Afghanistan’s sovereignty and allow an honored hero like him to live openly again. The Taliban are already grousing on Twitter about violations of the Doha agreement. But they promised at Doha not to host terrorists, so they have little standing to complain about the killing of the world’s most famous terrorist in their capital.

Zawahiri’s replacement will be younger and more energetic than the old doctor. I wish that younger man a short and skittish life. But the truth is that Zawahiri’s killing probably will not have much effect on global terrorism, because the younger jihadist generation has already ceased to regard him as a leader, spiritual or otherwise. Zawahiri’s crowning achievement, the September 11 attacks, was ultimately a one-off, and its plotters spent most of the rest of their lives on the run, or bored senseless in Guantánamo Bay. The jihadist movement that achieved something new was the Islamic State—which ridiculed Zawahiri, called him a goofball and a geezer, and set out on a path of wanton destruction against his orders. It mocked him for his deference to the Taliban and for swearing allegiance to its founder, Mullah Omar, who turned out to have been dead for years. Many of the possible successors to Zawahiri have already split off into other jihadist groups, and have long been trying to bring about carnage and a terrestrial paradise without al-Qaeda’s consent. They certainly will not seek the consent of his successor.