Washington ( CNN ) -- The news that Abu Yahya al-Libi , the No.2 leader of al Qaeda , is now confirmed to have been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan 's tribal region along the border with Afghanistan further underlines that the terrorist group that launched the 9/11 attacks is now more or less out of business . Under President Barack Obama , CIA drone strikes have killed 15 of the most important players in al Qaeda , according to a count maintained by the New America Foundation ( a nonpartisan think tank where I am a director ) . Similarly , President George W. Bush also authorized drone strikes that killed 16 important al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan while he was in office . As a result , according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials , there now remains only one leader of any consequence in al Qaeda and that is Ayman al-Zawahiri , the tetchy Egyptian surgeon who became the head of the group following the death of its founder , Osama bin Laden , in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan in May 2011 . Zawahiri , presumably , is keenly aware of the fate of so many of his longtime colleagues in al Qaeda . He will be expending considerable energy not to end up on the business end of a missile fired by a CIA drone if he , too , is hiding in the Pakistani tribal regions where the drone strikes have been concentrated . Meanwhile , Zawahiri faces an almost impossible task to follow through on al Qaeda 's main mission : attacking the United States , or failing that , one of its close allies . Al Qaeda has n't conducted a successful attack in the West since the bombings on London 's transportation system on July 7 , 2005 , and of course , the group has n't succeeded in attacking the United States for more than a decade . There are , however , al Qaeda 's regional affiliates still to contend with . The most virulent of those is the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula . It was AQAP that tried to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 using a Nigerian recruit who had secreted a hard-to-detect bomb in his underwear , and it was AQAP that smuggled bombs in printer cartridges onto cargo planes bound for the U.S. in October 2010 . Last month came news that a spy had penetrated AQAP and had retrieved a new generation of underwear bomb that the group 's bomb maker had apparently recently designed to bring down a commercial jet . But all of AQAP 's plots to bring down planes have had one thing in common : They failed . Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead , its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire `` lone wolves '' to attack the United States . In fact , lone wolves inspired by jihadist ideology have managed to kill a total of 17 Americans in the United States since 9/11 , according to a tally maintained by the New America Foundation . Meanwhile , 54 Americans are reported to be killed every year by lightning , according to the National Weather Service . In other words , to the average American , lightning is about 30 times more deadly than jihadist terrorism . Few Americans harbor irrational fears about being killed by a lightning bolt . Abu Yahya al-Libi 's death on Monday should remind them that fear of al Qaeda in its present state is even more irrational .
Al Qaeda 's number No.2 leader was killed in a CIA drone strike . bin Laden says it shows that the terrorist organization is effectively out of business . He says the only senior leader left is Bergen , the successor to bin Laden . Ayman al-Zawahiri : Fearing present day Al Qaeda 's is more irrational than fearing a lightning strike .