What would it take to nip al-Qaeda in the bud? Posted by Patrick Barry

Bruce Hoffman knows a little something about terrorism, so whenever he chimes in, it's worth taking a peek at what he has to say.  In this month's National Interest, Hoffmann takes issue with the suggestion that al-Qaeda has been weakened over the last several years.  Far from being hobbled, says Hoffmann, Al-Qaeda has simply decided to change tactics, abandoning large-scale attacks, for smaller, more frequent strikes, often involving western recruits.  

The first thing to say is that this isn't exactly a new argument.   Spencer, in particular, has taken note of this shift, arguing that it stems from the group's diminished ability to carry out attacks of the kind we saw on 9/11.  But Hoffmann disagrees with this suggestion. He argues that smaller attacks, carried out frequently and with the aid of westerners, actually serve AQ's interests better than big, 9/11-style plots.  In other words, AQ wasn't forced to make this shift, they chose to.

Moving on, one of Hoffmann's major concerns with the Obama administration's approach to counterterrorism is the weight they've placed on killing or capturing the leadership of terrorist movements.  In Hoffmann's view, "such measures—without accompanying or attendant efforts to stanch the flow of new recruits into a terrorist organization—amount to a tactical holding operation at best."  Readers will know that I wholeheartedly agree with this idea. But I wonder. Is it really fair to say that it doesn't register with the Obama administration?  Certainly at the rhetorical level, administration officials have defined the WH's counterterrorism policy as extending well beyond simply capturing or killing extremists.  There also have been signs that the Administration grasps this message as a matter of policy, taking such steps as ending the practice of torture (which spurred on terrorist recruitment) and expanding counterterrorism cooperation with U.S. allies.

Still, the overall picture of the Administration's counterterrorism record remains at least somewhat divorced from both Hoffmann's conception of what constitutes "good policy" and the administration's own rhetoric. There are many possible reasons for this. Serwer is smart to cite the politicization of terrorism, which so far has made it extremely difficult for administration to do some of the things it had promised.  The GOP in particular seems perfectly happy to block the WH's efforts to close Guantanamo, despite the effect such a move would have on "stanch[ing] the flow of new recruits into a terrorist organization."  Another thing to remember is that turning around the negative perceptions of the U.S. that can fuel terrorism rests on policy outcomes that take time to achieve.  Withdrawal from Iraq is happening, but slowly. Progress toward Middle East peace has stalled.  Resolving these challenges will go a long way toward undercutting the message of extremist groups like Al Qaeda, but it won't happen overnight.

And finally, we shouldn't paper-over the contradictory elements of the administration's own policy.  Getting rid of the 'Global War on Terror' is a fine thing, but isn't it fair to question the impact of such a move when the U.S. is still waging two wars in Muslim countries?  Can the administration meaningfully say that its counterterrorism policies accord with its principles, when the perception held by many observers is that it is conducting an extra-legal military campaign in Pakistan? There aren't easy answers to any of these questions. I think it's fair to say that the administration is still trying to get the balance right.   

Comments

[r4 gold]

As per my experience al Qaeda is a franchise of the CIA and if they will decide to conduct another 9/11 then there is nothing to stop them excepting reveal the entire truth to the world.

[etoshoe]

Summer is coming ,I want to travel with my friends. Now I want to buy myself a pair of sport shoes. But I cannot decide where can I buy ! One of my friends has told me that http:// www.etoshoes .com this shop have many cheap and discount nike shoes. However ,I cannot make a choice! Please give me a help!

[Michael Drew]

I have come to take Spencer's point as axiomatic - surely they'd be carrying out spectacular attacks on the homeland if they were able. But in my view lower-level attempts (Abdulmutallab etc.) aren't any more proof of the inability to carry out these attacks than the simple absence of known attempts. In other words, it could all end tomorrow. 9/11 was probably realistically from any reasonable correcting-for-hindsight governmental perspective still a one-percent-type risk on 9/10, but it was a 100% certainty on 9/11. The same kind of thing still can happen today, and I don't consider 2001 such a long time ago that the capability proven by this foe on that day can be definitively discounted, especially with the top leadership still alive and at some amount of liberty.

[Michael Drew]

That said, I think Hoffman is guilty of actually attempting to use the Detroit event to show things are worse than the should be -- precisely the converse of Attackerman's contention of what it shows. Between those two interpretations, I tend to buy Spencer's more than Hoffman's, but I really don't think it shows either to be convincing hypotheses on its own, or even on conjunction with much other evidence. There isn't really a fact of the matter about this: events proceed by their own logic, and vulnerabilities that we don't conceive of today could be shown to be deadly (far more deadly than a single plane being brought down, which contrary to Hoffman's inflation of that eventuality, is a possibility we always simply have to accept, whether from terrorism or accident). And they could not be.

[Michael Drew]

I'm just going to go ahead and keep lionizing this thread b/c I'm enjoying it. So what do I mean when i say 'there is no fact of the matter' on this question that Spencer and the professor are debating at a distance? Well, just this - that whatever realities Spencer thinks he can divine from the record of actual terrorism attempts, or motives Hoffman thinks he can reverse engineer from the logic of asymmetrical warfare, the fact of the matter is we just don't have a sense of what level of risk we actually face (however much I think Spence in particular would claim that we do). The illustration of this is that I think likely neither Spencer, nor certainly Hoffman, would claim that they would be surprised by either eventuality if, out of the same overall situational picture they each might paint, we either (a) did, or (b) did not experience a catastrophic, 9/11-or-greater level terrorism event in this country durning the next, say, seven years. If the predictive power of one's model doesn't allow for the generation of predictions the falsification of which would cause surprise to the builder of the model, then it's not clear that useful overall predictive models of any kind are being constructed, and that therefore the effort to sketch some picture of current reality with an eye toward giving probabilities is rather a doomed enterprise. The best that can be done in that case is to say that the best we do is draw a qualitative picture of what current reality looks like, and then openly admit that extrapolating from that to likely futures is an exercise in pure speculation.

[DePetris]

As George Hoffman has said time and again in his work (including in his most recent piece at TNI), killing or capturing terrorist leaders will not solve the problem of terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic; no matter how hard a country tries, destroying a tactic of war is a virtually impossible endeavor.

Much to the dismay of the United States, the War on Terrorism is not a war in the traditional sense (I hope politicians inside the Beltway understand this, considering that we have now spent a decade on fighting Islamic terrorism overseas). Much like the "war on drugs," or the "war on crime," or the "war on poverty," the war on terrorism is an endless battle. Thinking otherwise is just plain foolish, and depending on drone strikes and assassination attempts against individual terrorists is not going to solve the problem in the long run.

I'm glad Hoffman recognizes this, and I'm glad that other people are starting to follow in his footsteps. Rather than relying exclusively on conventional tools of war, like bombers, troops, and tanks, the United States needs to start shifting and utilizing tools in their soft-power arsenal. This means expanding economic aid to areas that are prone to terrorist activity, like societies that cannot sustain a decent level of economic activity for their citizens. This means ensuring that authoritarian governments in the Middle East, like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and members of the GCC start opening up their political systems and introducing a certain level of transparency in their government. This means easing restrictions on education so more foreign students (particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa) can experience how Americans truly live and how much the United States has to offer.

But most importantly, using soft-power means improving the American image. A big reason why Al'Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have a steady stream of young recruits is because they claim to defend Muslims against an ignorant and hypocritical superpower. Undercutting their ability to exploit falsities is logically the best course of action.

It's not going to defeat terrorism outright. But it would at least limit its appeal.

[Mac]

Lets just drop a nuke.

[ugg classic 5815 boots]

Long-standing disagreements on hot-button issues have continually threatened consensus documents at the United Nations—a trend which has not dramatically subsided this year. The failure of the 2005 NPT Review Conference is also still fresh in the minds of some. In the lead-up to the 2005 conference, the Bush administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses, signaled it would not seek to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, reversed the U.S. position on pursuing a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, withdrew from the ABM Treaty, sought funds for tactical nuclear weapons—bunker busters—that weapon commanders in the field never asked for, and signed a three-page bilateral agreement with Russia that contained no verification measures. On top of that, by the time the conference rolled around, the international climate had dramatically eroded. North Korea had withdrawn from the treaty, questions over Iran’s nuclear activities were on the rise, and the A.Q. Kh

[air yeezy]

My honor to share the wonderful opinions from your blog. May you a nice day. by air yeezy

[coach outlet]

Coach outlet store offer coach handbags and coach purses are sold at best price.
http://www.bagworlds.com/