Destroying al Qaeda Is Not an Option (Yet)

How many muslims will we need to keep "funneling into AQ" and keep killing them before we are done with terrorism, according to your "network theory"?

Do you not think it is smarter to address the root causes of terrorism?

The fundamental problem, sir, is this: you will never eliminate terrorism while the US's foreign policy is unjust.

A Jewish pro-Zionist UN Jurist (Mr. Goldstone) has just found that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. And what does the US do? Bury the report.

Since IDF is now a confirmed War Criminal entity sending ANY US military aid to the Israelis is in DIRECT contravention of our Arms Export Control Act. Why do we still support these war criminals?

I am not saying that Hamas and Hezboillah and AQ and other terrorists are blame-free. But we don't give them cluster bombs to use on children either.

Since we support war criminals with helicopters and cluster bombs, is it a surprise that we get terrorism in return? Every drone strike with collateral damage makes more AQ.

As soon as we stop messing around overseas (witness our clear involvement with the terrorist murder of 5 Iranian revolutionary guards recently) we will get blowback terrorism. It does not matter whether or not AQ has any safe havens or not or whether Hezbollah is rearming-- regular people -- heck, even US army officers, it appears -- can become radicalized by the sheer extent of our injustice abroad.

Force -- even when wielded by the seemingly strong against the nominally weak -- continues to be an exceedingly uncertain instrument. The United States' penchant for projecting power has created as many problems as it has solved. Genuinely decisive outcomes remain rare, costs often far exceed expectations, and unintended and unwelcome consequences are legion.

The pursuit of US military dominance is an illusion, the principal effect of which is to distort strategic judgment by persuading policymakers that they have at hand the means to make short work of history's complexities. The real need is to wean the United States from its infatuation with military power and come to a more modest appreciation of what force can and cannot do.

We have to come to the painful conclusion that we have created the terrorism that we are subject to via our terrible foreign policies. No interception of arms will protect us from our well-earned blowback.

Want to protect the US? Start with our deeply flawed FP.

THAT is the problem. THAT is why we have terrorism.

My name is Janaka and im from Sri Lanka, i might not know much about Foreign Policy and IR in my short 20 years of life, but the above article doesn't cater to the root cause of finishing terrorist. Allowing a terrorist organization to stay alive in the world only bring about more training and huge attacks by these organizations. You correctly state that when aqeida is together then they are able to be monitored, but you dont understand is that there is always chance for the monitoring of the organization to fail. This was so during the 9/11 and Madrid bombings as well as Mumbai and etc. When the organization is intact then the ability of it to attack with ferocity is present. The top leaders and the middle leaders have to be taken out with one go.

This is so and the case of why this is successful can be seen in Sri Lanka. The LTTE was waging a 30 year terrorist war against the government but only the present knew that while you adress the root cause (economic and political stability) you must also take out the structure of the terrorist group for complete victory. This is done by going in to the heartland with the full force you have so as to collapse the whole organization in one go. While this is done you must remember to address the root cause of the people so as to end the fresh recruits.

The USA did the first part of the strategy correct which allowed for the organization to be ripped apart in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. It took out the Taliban and the alqeida network, but it never help achieve economic stability in both countries, these golden chances missed allowed for regrouping, this regrouping was also possible as the bush never went after osama or the head of the Taliban. This allowed new recruits to come in as they believed that the top leaders were invincible and they too will be invincible if they join the organization. Taking out the middle allows for an end to communication between the top and the bottom, the middle has to be targeted and then the top leadership have to be targeted as well. The recruits then have to be rehabilitated in a proper manner to show the humane side of the enemy to the men and women wanting to be terrorist so that they will think twice, this is the only way to end terrorism.

I'm not sure, I wasn't totally swayed by the article. The only thing that I know for sure is that terrorism will never, ever be destroyed.Terrorism has existed for as long as a weaker force has resisted overwhelmingly superior force. Sure, some terrorists we like to think of as revolutionaries or freedom fighters but the fact remains that there will always be fringe organizations that are angry enough at someone to kill them, and they will always try to do so. There will always be groups that then make the leap that killing civilians or people who aren't their main target are an acceptable means to an end.

We all forget that the colonists of the American Revolutionary war killed 'tory' civilians simply for wanting to remain part of the British Empire, or that Spanish resistance killed French soldiers, civilians and even their own countrymen that got in the way to resist Napoleons occupation. We forget that Israel during it;s battle for independence pioneered the use of large truck bombs, suicide bombers and indiscriminate machine gun attacks against the British administration, accepting that innocent civilians would die as collateral damage.

Terrorists attack the population of their perceived enemy and see no difference between 'civilian' and 'military' targets, and such fighters have always existed.

So with Al Qaeda, how do you remove the root cause?? Do you eliminate poverty in the Muslim world? Do you allow the establishment of Sharia and of a caliphate from Pakistan to Morocco? Do you introduce democracy and remove the despots that currently rule most Muslim countries? Do you resolve the Israeli/Palestinian issue? What is the root cause?

Ideologically Al Qaeda say they want sharia, which is Islamic law enforced by a caliph, a sunni, wahabi caliph that administers Islamic law, well Saudi Arabia has that, yet it is one of the main targets of Al Qaeda. What Al Qaeda says it wants and what it really wants are two different things and continually evolves to oppose whatever the 'West' is doing. Even if you can somehow prevent that, then we're left with watching our backs for the next Timothy McVeigh.

Destroy Al Qaeda, let Al Qaeda hang about, either way someone, possibly Muslim will oppose western decadence and occasionally kill westerners. The only real solution to assess the risk, manage it and try and keep as many people out of harms way, withdrawing troops that make excellent targets from the Middle East would be a good first step. A 'war against terror' can never be won, until all humans accept universally that violence is not a valid way of achieving goals.

This ignores the fact that a small, self-taught group of angry young men would lack the capability to carry off such destructive attacks as the ones in 2001 or 2005. The people involved required a good deal of training from experts, fake passports, and funding that wouldn't be readily available to a few would-be revolutionaries. Even though I have mentioned before the relative ease I would have in carrying out a terrorist attack, I must admit that I couldn't expect to kill more than a dozen at the most. In addition, history shows that the vast majority of those small, independent groups can't last more than five years from the time of their first attack. With a lack of places to hide and large amounts of evidence left behind at every attack it would incredibly easy to find enough members to shatter the group.
Also we cannot expect militant Islamist theory to simply lose momentum. Unlike the Soviet Union and left-wing terrorists there is no one great power of Islamic terrorism that is seen by all as the inspiration for it. Recanting by imams involved in early terrorism has dealt it blows but has not totally discredited the process. Palestinians are still treated poorly by Jewish Israeli's and see no signs of any real change. The only real possibility I can find of stealing militant Islam's momentum would be a shift among the Asian and African authoritarian states to a semi-democratic, semi-theocratic form of government relatively free of corruption or brutality. The odds of that happening any time in the next few decades is laughable, to say the least.

He is a doctoral candidate who wants to get noticed. To that end, he wrote a provocative, but ultimately silly essay.

Al-Qeada should be allowed to exist so Islamic terrorists can simply funnel into one group, and therefore be easier to track and defeat? The thesis ignores the fact that Islamic terrorism is already a hydra - Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRGC, JAM, and all the rest. Also, it ignores Al-Qeada's ideological potency: as long as Zawahiri and Bin Laden can issue manifestos and statements, they will represent an organization that challenged to the United States - indeed, struck the worst blow against the United States since Pearl Harbor - and, by virtue of their simply being alive and free, won. Al-Qeada's very existence provides a model to other terrorist organizations. Finally, Mr. de las Casas writes as if the United States is omnipotent: we have neither the intelligence nor the manpower to simply stop once Al-Qeada is near total defeat. The intelligence failures over the past decade ought to have shown any serious student of foreign policy that combating terrorism resembles guesswork. To cease pursuing Al-Qeada because we feel they are "near defeat" would be criminally irresponsible. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "near defeat" - a few weeks ago they successfully murdered scores of people in a suicide murder bombing.

How do we fix the root causes of terrorism? Start by having a just and moral FP. You will never eliminate terrorism while the US's foreign policy is unjust.

Where to start?

Well, a Jewish pro-Zionist UN Jurist (Mr. Goldstone) has just found that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. And what does the US do? Bury the report.

Since IDF is now a confirmed War Criminal entity sending ANY US military aid to the Israelis is in DIRECT contravention of our Arms Export Control Act. Why do we still support these war criminals?

I am not saying that Hamas and Hezboillah and AQ and other terrorists are blame-free. But we don't give them cluster bombs to use on children either.

Since we support war criminals with helicopters and cluster bombs, is it a surprise that we get terrorism in return? Every drone strike with collateral damage makes more AQ.

US: disengage from the world, until you are competent enough to have a just and moral FP.

Interesting analysis! However, this theorizing is a bit too much on the optimistically irrational side! Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization that has poisoned young minds and continues to do so. Al-Qaeda is against the very premise of peace. In a world where there is enough chaos already, Al-Qaeda is playing the role of a devil that apparently is spread out everywhere but is hard to locate.

This 'funneling' phenomenon is fine but why let this unblissful 'alliance' carry on relentlessly? The writer should have taken a moment to understand the destructive impact of Al-Qaeda on the recent world history. Our world would have been a much safer place had this scourge of Arab religious fanaticism not made a mockery of our respective belief systems.

What is important here is how we deal with this craziness and not really wait for this 'network' or 'funneling' to happen. We know the hot spots of fanaticism, we understand how the fanatics operate and, to a large extent, the countries involved also have strong clues as to the hideouts of these devils.

Secretary Clinton's recent expression of frustration during her visit to Pakistan was an appropriate example of the fact that the generals in that country are not hitting where it really hurts; in fact they are going after innocent civilians in the name of 'Operation Waziristan', trying to impress Washington and its allies that they are doing a remarkable job wiping out Al-Qaeda.

We need to read between the lines and go after the fanatics. There should be no let up, no breathing space allowed. These imams, the madrassahs, the ideological websites, the mosques are brainwashing individuals. Look at what this US Army major did in Fort Hood, Texas. It turns out that although he's someone born and raised in a Western society, yet, he could still not stay away from the brutal clutches of these religious leeches. Who put in his mind that his faith allows him to kill and maim innocent souls around him? How is this massacre justified in Islam?

It is, of course, elements within Al-Qaeda and those propagating this anti-peace, anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism message that infuse such ideals in the minds of those who are lame enough to blindly put their respective fates at stake just for the sake of some superficial ‘religious beliefs’.

How can we let all this continue and follow this writer’s advise? It is beyond one’s understanding to imagine that the operation to destroy Al-Qaeda should be put on hold just to ‘attract’ a few more members of this wretched organization.

While we wait for this ‘funneling’ to go full circle, countless more lives would be lost, innumerable households and families will be devastated, the terrorists will take over the Pakistan nuclear facilities, Iran’s mullahs would go crazier, and, of course, those supposed to be ‘funneled’ would turn this world into an active hell!

Not an impressive piece – the writer needs to revisit his stupendously fallacious views!

The author seems to assume that Al Qaeda passively grazes upon a crop of budding fanatics created elsewhere by other circumstances, but this sounds hopelessly naive, exactly the "fanciful theorizing" that he dismisses in his piece. Al Qaeda actively propagandizes through many different media outlets, and it's hard to believe that this doesn't turn many more young Muslims into potential terrorists and suicide bombers than would become such without Al Qaeda present.

A large organization like Al Qaeda offers significantly more vertical advancement possibilities than the manifold splinter groups the author envisions post-destruction, and it's hard to say that terrorism will be more effective as perpetrated by the splinter groups. What have the Aryan Nation splinter groups alluded to in the article accomplished lately? Perhaps they have been very effective; I am certainly not an expert on white supremacy organizations. I must suspect, however, that any successes the groups had had would have made headlines or been worthy of mentioning in the article.

The focus on the separation of excellent and mediocre middle managers assumes terrorism is difficult and can only be accomplished by the talented, but this should be argued rather than assumed and may be optimistic and naive as well. The Western world has lots of easy targets and low hanging fruit remaining. The sniper serial killer just executed in Virginia worked with a rifle, a car, and one young assistant, yet disrupted an entire region's everyday existence for months on end and made ordinary people live in fear of doing things as simple as going to the gas station.

Al-Qaida is one of several major terrorist organizations, as commentors above have observed -- Shiite organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah may or may not collaborate with it, but are certainly not affiliated -- and moreover, it's not as centralized or as formal as this article makes it sounds.

There is an organization that is al-Qaida itself, which does have its own management -- but its primary activities are the organizing of training camps and the conducting of the occasional large, ambitious terrorist attack, like September 11th or the Madrid subway bombing.

However, the main purpose of al-Qaida is as a sort of front organization -- a means of taking the pressure off of the very large number of smaller organizations that use the al-Qaida name. The analogy here is the RIAA, which engages in the unpopular or unsavory parts of copyright legislation under its own name so as to channel popular outrage against itself and not against Apple Records, Sony, or Bertelsmann AG.

In short, destroying al-Qaida would be a large net win. Leaving their organization intact would not mean that we could track all Muslim terrorists (not even all Salafi Sunni terrorists, unless we tracked every organizational affiliate); destroying it would, or at least _could_, damage the prestige of terrorist supporters of the Salafi cause, and possibly of all Muslim terrorism.

The perception of al-Qaida as the primary if not the only enemy on the ground probably comes from the activities of "al-Qaida in Iraq". That organization was not originally related to al-Qaida at all, and was originally named _Jama'at al-Tawhid wa-Jihad_, "Group for Monotheism and Jihad."

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi renamed the organization in 2004, declaring his affiliation with al-Qaida, presumptively out of loyalty to bin Laden or hope for financial aid. Al-Qaida in Iraq, therefore, is not indicative of al-Qaida's abilities elsewhere; there is no division along state lines, no equally powerful "al-Qaida in Syria" or "al-Qaida in Afghanistan."

So the organization can be safely destroyed -- its operational capacities are not large enough to be worth infiltrating. But even this discussion assumes that we could infiltrate them in the first place (and judging by the level of proficiency our troops and intelligence services have displayed in Arabic so far, we probably couldn't) -- although the alternative means assuming we can catch them. Bin Laden may be in political sanctuary in Iran now -- so that, at least in the near future, may be a pipe dream as well.

That we have access to much al Qaeda information is clear- the fact that Intel agencies knew a Major at Fort Hood was trying to contact al Qaeda shows the scope. A plot to attack New York subways was caught by the British as well. But therein lies the difference.

The British caught the plot and went to U.S. Intel. Americans caught info on the Major at Fort Hood, and did nothing. They did not share the info that we know of, if they did the Army did nothing. Which is worse? That the Army knew and did nothing, or that Intel knew and told no one because the Army wasn't cleared for the info?

In Afghanistan foreign countries have complained we don't share info with anyone. We may ask them to do a bombing run, then hide the results from them!

The overhaul of Intel has been decades coming. When Joe McCarthy realized OSS, the FBI, then CIA and the White House had no idea what to do about espionage or spys he tried to tell the public. Look what happened to him. When Hanssen was allowed to stay in the FBI after being identified as a spy that was a clue nothing had changed. Fort Hood is just another example.

Letting al Qaeda survive while our agencies refuse to share info or in the case of the FBI, contaminate cases by illegal actions is playing with fire. If we can get Intel working under one umbrella, ok. But if it stays as it is with a President who refuses to reform it, knowing what terrorists are able to do and having no idea what to do with the information will continue to plague us.