convore.json/groups/socal-martial-law-alerts/previous-post-white-house-al-qaida-is-toast-as-long-as-these-shadow-wars-last-forever/messages.json

[{"user_id": 11626, "stars": [], "topic_id": 40751, "date_created": 1309374926.1317029, "message": "http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/white-house-al-qaida-is-toast", "group_id": 3920, "id": 1520403}, {"user_id": 11626, "stars": [], "topic_id": 40751, "date_created": 1309374890.6843891, "message": "by Spencer AckermanJune 29, 2011  | \n    2:12 pm  | \n    Categories: Terrorists, Guerillas, Pirates\n\nAl-Qaida? The global terrorist entity that the U.S. has fought and feared for a decade? Shattered and irrelevant, declares the White House\u2019s top counterterrorism adviser. It\u2019s just that the U.S. has to keep fighting shadow wars \u2014 endlessly \u2014 to make sure it stays that way.\n\nIt\u2019s not just the killing of Osama bin Laden. Over the past two and a half years, \u201cunique assets\u201d (i.e., drones and commando raids) have killed the leaders of \u201cvirtually every major al-Qaida affiliate,\u201d said White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan. Expect a lot more of that, as new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and incoming CIA Director David Petraeus have all but promised.\n\n\u201cIf we hit al-Qaida hard enough and often enough,\u201d Brennan said, \u201cthere will come a time when they simply can no longer replenish their ranks with the skilled leaders they need to sustain their operations.\u201d\n\nBrennan said that doesn\u2019t require a \u201cglobal war.\u201d But that\u2019s semantic, if not laughable. He gestured at the \u201cutter destruction\u201d of al-Qaida affiliates not just in the Pakistani tribal areas sheltering its leadership but \u201cthe periphery, places like Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and the Maghreb.\u201d\n\n\nThen comes the \u201csecurity cooperation\u201d with foreign security services where al-Qaida seeks to take root, \u201cbe it Somalia, the Sahel or Southeast Asia.\u201d Pakistan? Still \u201cone of our most important counterterrorism partners,\u201d Brennan said \u2013 never mind bin Laden using Abbottabad as a hideout for six years.\n\nAnd it\u2019ll be bolstered by strengthened homeland security measures like better cargo screening, watchlist procedures for keeping suspected terrorists off planes, and the Bush-era surveillance techniques authorized by the Patriot Act.\n\nThen comes partnering between law enforcement and American Muslim communities \u2014 who are \u201cpart of the solution\u201d \u2013- to get tips on homegrown extremism. Finally, there\u2019s the need to build a \u201cculture of resilience\u201d at home, so if a terrorist attack happens, the U.S. can \u201crecover quickly\u201d Brennan said, and \u201cdeprive al-Qaida of the success it seeks.\u201d Talk about hedging.\n\nBut the biggest success the U.S. enjoys against al-Qaida isn\u2019t the bin Laden kill or the drone strikes. It\u2019s the Arab Spring, which leaves al-Qaida \u201con the sidelines, watching history pass them by,\u201d Brennan said, reducing its ability to recruit or inspire new terrorists. Homegrown Arab reform movements expose al-Qaida\u2019s \u201cgrandiose vision\u201d of a new Islamic caliphate as an \u201cabsurd\u2026 feckless delusion.\u201d\n\nStrikingly, Brennan had next to nothing to say about the Afghanistan war, a war still premised on smashing al-Qaida, at least according to President Obama. While Brennan hyped Obama\u2019s troop withdrawals, by next September, there will still be 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and a long-term troop basing agreement even after Afghan troops take charge of combat by 2014.\n\n\u201cOur best offense won\u2019t always be deploying large armies abroad,\u201d Brennan said. But Obama\u2019s leaving one in place.\n\nAll this points to a big intellectual tension at the heart of the White House\u2019s counterterrorism approach. Why does the U.S. still need to devote such overwhelming resources worldwide against a force that\u2019s seeing history pass it by? If the U.S. still needs such robust surveillance tools at home, why won\u2019t American Muslims feel like targets, instead of full citizens and counterterrorism partners? And how does the U.S. know when al-Qaida has been \u201cutterly destroyed\u201d?\n\nThe charitable way to put it is that the Obama administration is being cautious. The uncharitable way is that it doesn\u2019t know how to end the war.\n\nWhile Brennan portrayed al-Qaida as a spent force, he made it clear that there won\u2019t be any rollback of the security state built after 9/11 to confront it. \u201cWe must have a legal framework that provides our extraordinary intelligence, counterterrorism, and law enforcement professionals with all the lawful tools they need to do their job,\u201d Brennan said.\n\nAbove all, Brennan wants the enduring image of al-Qaida to be the one of bin Laden that the U.S. released from the Abbottabad raid \u2014 \u201can old terrorist, alone, hunched over in a blanket, flipping through old videos of a man and a movement that history is leaving behind.\u201d Except that Brennan\u2019s fight against that pitiful old man will continue, worldwide, with no end in sight.", "group_id": 3920, "id": 1520392}]