[Ret10Echo]

Seems there was never really any way to "franchise" his jihad... I agree that it appeared he was out of the loop. Heck, the guy had his own prison built to house him.

Osama's death 'a good career move'?

Al-Qaeda's leader might appear to have died with a bang, but he had long since died with a whimper.

Robert Grenier

For Osama bin Laden, violent death must have come as a blessing. It has given him, at least fleetingly, a seeming prominence that in fact had long since ebbed away, not only in the Muslim world, but even within al-Qaeda itself.

Consider, then, what it must have been like for such an ego to fade into functional obscurity. As he was reduced to issuing occasional audio tapes of increasing irrelevance, even the core of the organisation he founded learned to live without him. And the scattered little groups around the globe which had appropriated the al-Qaeda name in fact had little connection to bin Laden's organisation, and still less to bin Laden himself.

Link here