Most Westerners, even most American right-wingers whom I generally think have a better hold on reality than most here, possess only vague and largely anecdotal evidence for what al-Qaeda and its ilk intend for us apart from 9/11. You go to Dagestan or Algeria or the Maluccas or Mindanao or Somalia and you'll see very clearly what this war is really all about. This is why bitching complaining about progress in the war on terrorism is such an asinine thing.

Through the Iraq war we have sent the global terror network into disarray. But the Saudi threat is still there, as is the Iranian one - but my point is that al-Qaeda is losing far more of its foot soldiers fighting in Iraq (and yes, the war there did assist the group in its recruiting efforts, but there are still only so many would-be jihadis and only so many places to train them). My basic opinion is that the best way to neutralize the al-Qaeda network is to start focusing more on where the organization has been endeavoring to regroup.

Knocking out the training camps is every bit as important as knocking out the leadership and those camps are still open in Somalia, Sudan, Georgia, and the southern Philippines. That fact needs to change. So does the Saudi funding and the Pakistani tolerance of all the folks who don't give a rat's ass about Kashmir but think that India would make a nice piece of the global caliphate, etc., etc. The problem is that you can't accomplish all of this at once.

If we could, US forces would have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, the Ferghana Valley, Chechnya, Mindanao, Georgia, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Margarita Island, Ein al-Hilweh, Sulawesi, the Triple Border, the Allied Democratic Forces enclave in the Congo, Saudi Arabia, and at least three provinces in northern Yemen simultaneously. All at the same time that we started bombing the Taliban. You want to deliver a coup de grace to the network, that would pretty much do it. The problem is that we can't for a number of reasons, so you take things step by step to accomplish the same eventual goal. This is what I see Bush as having done since 9/11. You remove those threats and you make sure that civilization wins this fight

Photo credits: Israel-Wat

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Saudi Arabia is a major pillar for holding up the organization, but so is Iran, so is Sudan (which is reportedly slated to be taken off the terrorist list out of US fears that Khartoum and its oil will fall into the Chinese sphere of influence).\.

Through the Iraq war have sent the global terror network into disarray. The Saudi threat is still there, as is the Iranian one - but my point is that al-Qaeda is losing far more of its foot soldiers fighting in Iraq (and yes, the war there did assist the group in its recruiting efforts, but there are still only so many would-be jihadis and only so many places to train them).

My basic opinion is that the best way to neutralize the al-Qaeda network is to start focusing more on where the organization has been endeavoring to regroup.

Knocking out the training camps is every bit as important as knocking out the leadership and those camps are still open in Somalia, Sudan, Georgia, and the southern Philippines. That fact needs to change. So does the Saudi funding and the Pakistani tolerance of all the folks who don't give a rat's ass about Kashmir but think that India would make a nice piece of the global caliphate, etc., etc.

The problem is that you can't accomplish all of this at once.

If we could, US forces would have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, the Ferghana Valley, Chechnya, Mindanao, Georgia, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Margarita Island, Ein al-Hilweh, Sulawesi, the Triple Border, the Allied Democratic Forces enclave in the Congo, Saudi Arabia, and at least three provinces in northern Yemen simultaneously. All at the same time that we started bombing the Taliban. You want to deliver a coup de grace to the network, that would pretty much do it.

The problem is that we can't for a number of reasons, so you take things step by step to accomplish the same eventual goal. This is what I see Bush as having done since 9/11. You remove those threats and you make sure that civilization wins this fight, so that all of us right-wingers and left-wingers to squabble over the planet. I also don't think of this as a partisan issue - Bayh, Biden, and Lieberman at least seem to understand what we're up against.

Al-Qaeda can still fight strike back, as the recent bombings in Iraq, Chechnya, and Bombay all demonstrate. I'm not at all surprised by this, that's simply the nature of the beast. It was specifically set up in a decentralized manner in order to negate the disadvantages associated with more pyramidal organizations. However, we've done more cumulative damage to the terror network in about two years than was done in the last twelve, and that is certainly something to be extremely proud about.

My Own Views on the War

I don't really care for an empire because I very much doubt that our political culture or general populace can sustain it (see Niall Ferguson's "The Empire Slinks Back" editorial for more on why this is) in the immediate to near future. I care even less about the benefit of corporate America except in the general sense that I desire for the economy to stay within a certain level so that I can enjoy the lifestyle to which I am currently attuned.

But above all else, I want to keep myself and my country safe. There is right now an exceptionally beautiful woman attending Vanderbilt University's music school in Tennessee whom I love. I don't want either myself or her to have to live in world where a non-state entity has access to the most hideous weapons ever conceived by humanity and to put it shortly - I don't want an American version of Halabja in Nashville because some jihadi with a crop duster decided to make Senate Majority Leader Frist pay for supporting US action in the war on terror.

And at the end of the day, that's why I support the US war against Iraq even prior to any action against Saudi Arabia.

Story Credits: Dan Darling writing at the Winds of Change Blog

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