The news media was all abuzz late Saturday night when President Trump teased a big announcement.

Something very big has just happened!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2019

The White House then announced that President Trump would be making a statement this morning. By the time that word had come down, news outlets were starting to hear from sources that this was big news. Newsweek was the first to claim that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed during a raid by U.S. special operations troops in northwest Syria.

And when President Trump stepped up to the podium on Sunday morning, he confirmed the good news.

“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” Trump announced at the White House, saying the U.S. had “brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice.”

As U.S. forces bore down on him, Trump said al-Baghdadi fled into a tunnel with three of his children and detonated a suicide vest. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward.”

Why is this good news? Well, al-Baghdadi has been a high-value target for a long time, as the self-proclaimed head of the Islamic State “caliphate.” And concerns about ISIS rising up again are very real in the wake of the entire Turkish attack on the Kurds in Syria after the withdrawl of American forces, allowing for ISIS fighters to escape. If they could find their leader, who has long been in hiding, it wouldn’t be hard to start spreading terror everywhere again.

Take out al-Baghdadi, and ISIS takes a hard blow. And the United States gets the biggest target knocked off the list since Osama bin Laden. And there is no doubt that al-Baghdadi needed to be held to account for his crimes.

Baghdadi was “screaming, crying, whimpering”. “We knew he had a tunnel,” President Trump says. “Think of James Foley. Think of Kayla Mueller, the things they did to her.” “Orange suits… beheadings… he died a coward,” President Trump says of Baghdadi’s death during US raid.

— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) October 27, 2019

This is a good moment for the United States, because there is one less bad guy in the world. Does this mean the end of ISIS? No, and ISIS will probably work on framing al-Baghdadi and the two wives (who were also wearing suicide vests when he detonated his) as martyrs, even though he should be seen as a coward who killed women and tried to kill his own children in his last pathetic moments on Earth. And hopefully this does serve as a warning to other ISIS leader wannabes – we will find you, and we will take you out.

Featured image: President Donald Trump, Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, public domain