AP Photo

With the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of American Special Forces on May 2, 2011, the 9/11 decade may be said to be psychologically over.1 Political decades, after all, do not have to fit neatly into the calendar.  Just as the Sixties began with the assassination of President Kennedy on November 2, 1963 and ended, arguably, with Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August 1974, so that successful raid constitutes a suitable bookend for a period that began on September 11, 2001.