The fashion this spring in Washington, D.C. is optimism - at least so far as al-Qaeda and the war on terrorism are concerned. In recent weeks, a succession of senior Bush Administration officials, intelligence officers, pundits, newspaper columnists, academicians and other knowledgeable observers have joined in trumpeting, if not quite the imminent end of al-Qaeda, at least the beginning of its end.
Among the first and most nuanced proclamations came from Juan Zarate, the National Security Council’s deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, in a major address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Carefully calibrating both recent demonstrable progress in the war on terrorism alongside formidable remaining challenges, Zarate nonetheless drew attention to a “number of important developments that signal that al-Qaeda and the movement it represents are under greater stress and finding more opposition to its program, in particular by Muslims affected directly by al-Qaeda’s tactics.”[1] Zarate’s remarks were amplified two weeks later by an anonymous senior American counterterrorism official quoted in an interview with the London Daily Telegraph. “There are indicators all over the world of where al-Qaeda’s programme is not meeting with the grand acceptance that it assumed,” he explained. The result, the official declared, is that the end of the global threat al-Qaeda poses is now as “visible” as it is “foreseeable.”[2] Then, there was the statement by Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, who told reporters on a visit to the Shi’a holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in late May, “You are not going to hear me say that al-Qaeda is defeated, but they’re never been closer to defeat than they are now.”[3] And, finally, under a front-page Washington Post headline, “US Cites Big Gains Against al-Qaeda,” CIA Director Michael Hayden recently went down a list of indicators that, he argued, portended al-Qaeda’s demise. “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally... as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.”
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The full article can be found via the link above. Well written and brings home a great point.
Over time, complacency is our worst enemy.
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