Something About Bin-Laden's Death You Didn't Know

I've always been a big reader, and when I find a book I like I often reread it several times over the years. Such is the case with Peter Hopkirk's classic The Great Game, which details the struggle over Central Asia between Russia and Britain that raged for a century or more and peaked in the late 1800s.

I highly recommend this book for a number of reasons.

Around halfway through it you will learn of the British military officer and explorer John Abbott, who was a key player in the great game of spying and deception in the middle of the 19th century.

He eventually was knighted and a British garrison town in Pakistan -- Abbottabad -- was named after him.

Earlier this year, when the Navy Seals tracked down and killed Osama bin-Laden, it was in modern day Abbottabad, still a military-dominated town over a century and a half after its founding.

Given the origins of the Mujahideen warriors bin-Laden purported to lead (who were funded and organized by the CIA and American military agencies in response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979), there are layers of irony and historical precedent regarding where this clandestine assassination took place.

There's perhaps no better way to appreciate the nuances of these events than revisiting the historical context, especially because most of it has so long since been collectively forgotten.