Historians seem not to like the great man story of history nowadays, preferring to talk about how the actions of lots of people wind up being at least as important as the actions of a single leader. And that makes a lot of sense, really. So why are the papers and the politicians all about the assassination of one guy? Does the death of one guy mean that thousands of aggrieved combatants are gonna say, “Fair enough, we gave it a shot, but obviously the Americans killed our guy and now we’ll just stop being mad at them.” Or is that maybe optimistic?