Category Archives: Washington

Those who would destroy…

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Mark Dan­ner, in this week’s New Yorker:

Amer­ica has endured fierce elec­toral strug­gles over war and peace before, most recently over Viet­nam in 1968. This “war on ter­ror” cam­paign, how­ever, in its focus on the crit­i­cal ques­tion of “Who can make us safer?,” may come to more closely resem­ble the Red-baiting cam­paigns of the fifties or the elec­tions after the Civil War in which rivals “waved the bloody shirt.” But this cam­paign includes a shadow player the oth­ers lacked. For nearly a decade, Al Qaeda has attempted not to defeat the United States mil­i­tar­ily but to gain adher­ents by build­ing its image among Mus­lims as the only effec­tive counter to Amer­ica and to the mod­er­ate regimes that Amer­i­can power sus­tains. To this polit­i­cal pro­gram the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion sought to offer what it thought of as a polit­i­cal response: to “trans­form the Mid­dle East,” by way of war in Iraq. So far, the occu­pa­tion has done much to dimin­ish Amer­i­can pres­tige among the mod­er­ate Mus­lims it was meant to per­suade — and has helped increase the pres­tige of those who make the claim, while they go on killing the occu­piers, that they are the only effec­tive oppo­si­tion to Amer­i­can power.
In the United States, the debate over Iraq has encour­aged a kind of cor­ro­sive, bru­tal pol­i­tics that has at its cen­ter an appeal to per­sonal fear. That leaves a pow­er­ful weapon in the hands of the ter­ror­ists, who gained enor­mously after the attacks in Madrid by appear­ing to swing Spain’s elec­tion against a major ally of Pres­i­dent Bush. No one can say what effect a ter­ror­ist attack would have on the Amer­i­can elec­tion. But the tone and the terms of the evolv­ing strug­gle for polit­i­cal dom­i­nance here present the pos­si­bil­ity that such an attack could sim­i­larly strengthen those whom both can­di­dates have pledged to destroy.

One Condi, under Oath…

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Good news. National Secu­rity Advi­sor Condi Rice will tes­tify under oath before the 9/11 com­mis­sion.
In White House Coun­sel Alberto Gon­za­les’ let­ter, he writes:

The pres­i­dent has con­sis­tently stated a pol­icy of strong sup­port for the com­mis­sion and instructed the exec­u­tive branch to pro­vide unprece­dented and extra­or­di­nary access to the com­mis­sion. To my knowl­edge, the exec­u­tive branch has pro­vided access to doc­u­ments or infor­ma­tion in response to each of the requests issued by the com­mis­sion to date, includ­ing many highly clas­si­fied and extremely sen­si­tive doc­u­ments that have sel­dom, if ever, been made avail­able out­side the exec­u­tive branch.

Ah, but wait, there’s more:

The nec­es­sary con­di­tions are as fol­lows. First, the com­mis­sion must agree in writ­ing that Dr. Rice’s tes­ti­mony before the com­mis­sion does not set any prece­dent for future com­mis­sion requests, or requests in any other con­text, for tes­ti­mony by a national secu­rity adviser or any other White House offi­cial.
Sec­ond, the com­mis­sion must agree in writ­ing that it will not request addi­tional pub­lic tes­ti­mony from any White House offi­cial, includ­ing Dr. Rice. …

Nice. One shot guys, and that’s it. Let’s leave aside the fact that the com­mis­sion is not an arm of Con­gress and is a pres­i­den­tially appointed body, so the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers argu­ment is shaky, at best. What this is, is a face-saving move as Josh Mar­shall notes. He also makes the excel­lent point that with­out any fol­lowup ses­sions allowed, what hap­pens if Rice’s tes­ti­mony con­tra­dicts Clarke’s?
Regard­less, it’s about time. After a week of surg­ing storm clouds, Team Bush has finally decided that the only way to rebut Richard Clarke’s remarks is to make Rice talk, pub­licly and under oath. The ques­tion is, will she be able to avoid per­jur­ing her­self and will any­one be able to do any­thing about it if she does?
Those of us who opposed the war and just about every­thing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has done obvi­ously sus­pect the Admin­is­tra­tion has been resis­tant to Rice’s tes­ti­mony because we think the admin­is­tra­tion has some­thing to hide — likely gross incom­pe­tence, obses­sion and a small-minded agenda. Noth­ing crim­i­nal, but it would be very, very dam­ag­ing to Bush’s halo as a “war pres­i­dent.“
Those who sup­port the war and the White House think Clarke is a pro­pa­gan­dist for the evil doers, aka the Demo­c­ra­tic Party, that _he’s_ the liar and — the horror! — that he’s a big ol’ gay. Now if they can just fin­ger him as a Cana­dian or French­man, the demo­niza­tion will be com­plete.
Speak­ing of com­plete, I’ve spent too much time on l’affaire de Clarke. Peo­ple like Josh Mar­shall, Bill­mon, Kevin Drum and George Paine are doing a bet­ter job and I urge you to check on them for Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tick­ing re Clarke. We will now return to our reg­u­larly sched­uled war in Iraq.

“Our weapons are powerless!”

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For­mer coun­tert­er­ror­ism czar Richard Clark proved him­self an unblink­ing war­rior against the Bush attack dogs today as the White House attempted to bring him down — but their weapons were appar­ently pow­er­less against him.
First, they tried to use a back­ground brief­ing he gave against him. In today’s press brief­ing, White House press sec­re­tary Scott McClel­lan tried repeat­edly to paint Clarke’s August 2002 back­ground brief­ing to reporters as “his own words” instead of the words of a man who was spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent.

Q Scott, just one more on Clarke. Given the fact that you’re point­ing to this tran­script, read­ing through it, say­ing it’s a ques­tion of his cred­i­bil­ity –
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, it’s his own words.
Q Right.
MR. McCLEL­LAN: I’m just repeat­ing his own words.
Q Right. So given that, given the fact that he def­i­nitely had this quoted as toe­ing the administration’s line before reporters, why do you think he is say­ing what he’s say­ing?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, like I said, this goes to his cred­i­bil­ity, and I think that those are ques­tions that Mr. Clarke needs to answer. It was Mr. Clarke who went out and made asser­tions that this admin­is­tra­tion was doing noth­ing prior to 9/11, that we were not tak­ing the threat from al Qaeda seri­ously, that there was a delay, that we moved slowly. But Dick Clarke, in his words acknowl­edges, one, that the admin­is­tra­tion took al Qaeda very seri­ously and began a process to address the threat very early on; and two, our admin­is­tra­tion was able to come to quick deci­sions on a num­ber of issues that had been on the table for sev­eral years; and three, that the Pres­i­dent directed the White House to develop a new com­pre­hen­sive strat­egy of elim­i­nat­ing rather than rolling al Qaeda. You can­not square Dick Clarke’s new asser­tions with his past words. That’s very clear.
I would like to just point to a cou­ple of other parts of this tran­script from Mr. Clarke’s inter­view with reporters. There’s a ques­tion by a reporter. Ques­tion: What is your response to the sug­ges­tion in the August 12th — well, in the Time Mag­a­zine arti­cle that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion was unwill­ing to take on board the sug­ges­tions made in the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion because of ani­mus against the — gen­eral ani­mus against the for­eign pol­icy?
Mr. Clark: “I think if if there was a gen­eral ani­mus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy deal­ing with the ter­ror­ism issue. This is the one issue where the National Secu­rity Coun­cil lead­er­ship decided con­ti­nu­ity was impor­tant and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn’t sound like ani­mus against the pre­vi­ous team to me,” Mr. Clarke went on to say.
Then a reporter — here it’s listed, Jim Angle, White House Cor­re­spon­dent [From Fox News, which came to the White House with this tran­script — CA]: “You’re say­ing that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion did not stop any­thing that the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was doing while it was mak­ing these deci­sions, and by the end of the sum­mer had increased money for covert action five­fold, is that cor­rect?“
Mr. Clarke: “All of that is cor­rect.“
Now, two other parts I want to refer to, as well:
Ques­tion by a reporter: “Were all of those issues part of an alleged plan that was late Decem­ber, and the Clin­ton team decided not to pur­sue because it was too close to –” Mr. Clarke jumps in here: “There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was, was these two things — one a descrip­tion of the exist­ing strat­egy, which included a descrip­tion of the threat; and two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years and which were still on the table.“
So the follow-up ques­tion: “So there was noth­ing that devel­oped, no doc­u­ments or no new plan of any sort?
Mr. Clarke: “There was no new plan.“
Ques­tion: “No new strat­egy, I mean. I don’t want to get into seman­tics.“
Mr. Clarke: “Plan, strat­egy — there was no, noth­ing new.“
And later on, again this is Jim Angle here, ask­ing this ques­tion: “So just to fin­ish up, if we could then, so what you’re say­ing is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actu­ally, the first changes since Octo­ber of ’98 were made in the spring months just after the admin­is­tra­tion came into office?
Mr. Clarke: “You got it. That’s right.“
And finally, because I think this one is impor­tant, as well, Mr. Clarke towards the end of the inter­view went on to say: “You know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the roll-back strat­egy to the elim­i­na­tion strat­egy. When Pres­i­dent Bush told us in March to stop swat­ting at flies and just solve this prob­lem, then that was the strate­gic direc­tion that changed the NSPD” — meaning the National Secu­rity Pol­icy Direc­tive — “from one of roll-back to one of elim­i­na­tion.“
So those are Mr. Clarke in his own words, and his own words con­tra­dict what he now asserts.
Q Is he a liar or is he just for­get­ful?
Q Scott, Scott?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: April.
Q Is he a liar or just for­get­ful?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: You’ve had your turn.
April.

Here McClel­lan dis­putes that the White House even attempts to coor­di­nate its daily com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­egy.

Q Scott, back to Terry’s ques­tion. Are these just basi­cally talk­ing points? We know every day all of you start from the begin­ning of the day to dis­sem­i­nate — well, to fig­ure out what you’re going to say to the media, how you’re going to present your spin, I guess, you would say in some ways. And was he just fol­low­ing talk­ing points, the spin line?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: I don’t know if that’s — I don’t know if that’s quite an accu­rate descrip­tion of the way we start our day or what we do.
Q Well, I mean when you start your day, you guys are talk­ing about what you want to put out there and how you’re going to put it out there, and what you should not say. And was he, indeed, fol­low­ing the line that you were given here that day?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: This was Mr. Clarke describ­ing what he knew in his own words. This was not any­body but Mr. Clarke mak­ing these com­ments.
Q But, Scott, in this admin­is­tra­tion when reporters go and ask you, other per­sons around here, we get the same words — the same words come out. There’s no vari­a­tion or any­thing. Was he –
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, I think that’s a sign that we’re fol­low­ing the President’s direc­tion and his poli­cies.
Q You’re fol­low­ing talk­ing points, cor­rect?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: No. Again, you need to sep­a­rate out some of this. This was Mr. Clarke, on his own, mak­ing these com­ments back in the spring of 2002. This was him in his own words.

So, accord­ing to McClel­lan, there are no talk­ing points and Clarke is a rogue spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent who talks off the reser­va­tion — in his own words, remem­ber — but who’s own words back up the president’s poli­cies.
Huh?
Then, dur­ing his tes­ti­mony today before the National Com­mis­sion on Ter­ror­ist Attacks Upon the United States, Com­mis­sion mem­ber Gov. James R. Thomp­son held up the tran­script of the Aug. 2002 press brief­ing and asked, “Which is true?“
Clarke responded with, “I was asked by sev­eral peo­ple in senior lev­els of the Bush White house to do a press back­grounder to try to explain that set of facts that min­i­mized crit­i­cism of that admin­is­tra­tion. And so I did.“
“I was asked to make that case to the press,” Clarke con­tin­ued. “I was spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, and I made the case I was asked to make.“
Thomp­son responded with incredulity that such things ever hap­pen, ask­ing, “Are you say­ing to me you were asked to make an untrue case to the press and the pub­lic and you went ahead and did it?“
“No sir,” replied Clarke. “Not untrue. Not an untrue case. I was asked to high­light the pos­i­tive aspects of what the admin­is­tra­tion had done and to min­i­mize the neg­a­tive aspects of what the admin­is­tra­tion had done. And as a spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, one is fre­quently asked to do that kind of thing. I’ve done it for sev­eral pres­i­dents.“
Snap!
So far, the White House’s only line of defense against Clarke is that he’s “a liar and a boob and both out-of-the-loop and respon­si­ble for every­thing that went wrong,” as Josh Mar­shall neatly sum­ma­rizes. And those are pretty weak con­sid­er­ing he’s got 30 years of ser­vice under his belt, he was the loop and his book shows how the Clin­ton White House did a lot of things right — such as pre­vent­ing al Qaeda from tak­ing over Bosnia in the mid 1990s. [pp 136 – 140]
Aside: I’m out­raged that Fox approached the White House with this back­ground brief­ing tape. Accord­ing to McClel­lan, “it was Fox News who yes­ter­day came to us and said they had a tape of this con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. Clarke.” If that’s true, then a news orga­ni­za­tion that was included in a brief­ing with the agree­ment that it was on back­ground — that is, with no quotes and the briefer not be iden­ti­fied — approached a source’s for­mer employer and offered to give up appar­ently con­flict­ing words that the employer could use against the source. (I read the tran­script. It’s not par­tic­u­larly con­tra­dic­tory, frankly, and can eas­ily be read as how Clarke char­ac­ter­ized it.) This is a major jour­nal­is­tic no-no. When I was at Colum­bia University’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism, we were taught to go to jail before you give up your sources. And you sure as hell don’t approach some­one you’re sup­posed to be cov­er­ing and offer to help them out against some­one.
But back to Fox. Any­one who still thinks Fox is “fair and bal­anced” should really have their head exam­ined. If you like it because it’s a right-wing attack net­work, more power to you. At least you’re hon­est with your­self. But if you really think it’s work­ing for any­thing but Bush’s re-election, you really need to get out more.
But all this crit­i­cism is really sec­ondary because Clarke reserves he real out­rage for Iraq. When the sub­ject of the war there came up, Clarke said to the Com­mis­sion, sim­ply and dev­as­tat­ingly, “By invad­ing of Iraq, the Pres­i­dent of United of the States has greatly under­mined the war on ter­ror­ism.“
For a long sev­eral sec­onds, there was noth­ing in the room but a deadly silence.

Bloggers: Whitewash in the works

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There’s a fair amount of skep­ti­cism among well-known blog­gers about the Pres­i­den­tial Com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the intel­li­gence fail­ures in the lead-up to Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom. I don’t have a lot to add myself, but I’d like to point out some good posts.
First of all, there’s the exec­u­tive order itself estab­lish­ing the com­mis­sion. Its mis­sion, in an excerpt from the order:

Sec. 2. Mis­sion. (a) The Com­mis­sion is estab­lished for the pur­pose of advis­ing the Pres­i­dent in the dis­charge of his con­sti­tu­tional author­ity under Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion to con­duct for­eign rela­tions, pro­tect national secu­rity, and com­mand the Armed Forces of the United States, in order to ensure the most effec­tive counter-proliferation capa­bil­i­ties of the United States and response to the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks and the ongo­ing threat of ter­ror­ist activ­ity. The Com­mis­sion shall assess whether the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­nity is suf­fi­ciently autho­rized, orga­nized, equipped, trained, and resourced to iden­tify and warn in a timely man­ner of, and to sup­port United States Gov­ern­ment efforts to respond to, the devel­op­ment and trans­fer of knowl­edge, exper­tise, tech­nolo­gies, mate­ri­als, and resources asso­ci­ated with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion, related means of deliv­ery, and other related threats of the 21st Cen­tury and their employ­ment by for­eign pow­ers (includ­ing ter­ror­ists, ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, and pri­vate net­works, or other enti­ties or indi­vid­u­als). In doing so, the Com­mis­sion shall exam­ine the capa­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges of the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­nity to col­lect, process, ana­lyze, pro­duce, and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the capa­bil­i­ties, inten­tions, and activ­i­ties of such for­eign pow­ers relat­ing to the design, devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­ture, acqui­si­tion, pos­ses­sion, pro­lif­er­a­tion, trans­fer, test­ing, poten­tial or threat­ened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion, related means of deliv­ery, and other related threats of the 21st Cen­tury.
(b) With respect to that por­tion of its exam­i­na­tion under para­graph 2(a) of this order that relates to Iraq, the Com­mis­sion shall specif­i­cally exam­ine the Intel­li­gence Community’s intel­li­gence prior to the ini­ti­a­tion of Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom and com­pare it with the find­ings of the Iraq Sur­vey Group and other rel­e­vant agen­cies or orga­ni­za­tions con­cern­ing the capa­bil­i­ties, inten­tions, and activ­i­ties of Iraq relat­ing to the design, devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­ture, acqui­si­tion, pos­ses­sion, pro­lif­er­a­tion, trans­fer, test­ing, poten­tial or threat­ened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion and related means of delivery.

Well! Looks like the ques­tions *I* want to see answered won’t be. The pri­mary ques­tion is not “What went wrong with our intel­li­gence analy­sis?” but instead should be, “Was this intel­li­gence mis­used?“
As Bill­mon says, the fix is in. Josh Mar­shall says so, too. Hes­iod over at Coun­ter­spin Cen­tral points out that Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion, seems to have already made up his mind. And Atrios points out the Democ­rac­tic response to the appoint­ment of for­mer fed­eral appel­late judge Lau­rence Sil­ber­man, as co-chairman of the com­mis­sion.
Lots of good reading.

U.S. vs. al Qaeda: Spring offensives planned

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The United States is plan­ning a spring offen­sive against al Qaeda and Tal­iban posi­tions in Afghanistan, and a spokesman for the U.S. mil­i­tary said America’s armed forces are “sure” they can catch Osama bin Laden and Tal­iban leader Mul­lah Omar “later this year.” Unfor­tu­nately, al Qaeda likely has a spring offen­sive of its own in the plans.
But first, con­fir­ma­tion of the Amer­i­can plans from Strat­for:

For­mer Pak­istani Inter-Service Intel­li­gence Chief Lt. Gen. Hameed Gul (Ret.) has told the daily _Nawa-I-Waqt_ that reports of a planned U.S. offen­sive against al Qaeda in the spring were true. Gul said CENTCOM com­man­der Gen. John Abizaid had asked coun­tries bor­der­ing Afghanistan for per­mis­sion to carry out oper­a­tions within their bor­ders. Gul implied that Pak­istan had not granted its con­sent. In fur­ther com­ments, he said Wash­ing­ton would post­pone elec­tions in Afghanistan in order to con­duct this oper­a­tion and had been pres­sur­ing Islam­abad regard­ing its nuclear pro­gram to coerce its cooperation.

Pak­istan has already appar­ently taken the lead on this offen­sive. On Jan. 13, accord­ing to the _Pakistan Daily Times_, about 250 com­man­dos from the Pak­istani military’s elite Spe­cial Ser­vices Group (SSG) along with reg­u­lar infantry troops were shifted from North Waziris­tan to the Wana area in South Waziris­tan in the Fed­er­ally Admin­is­tered Tribal Areas, notes Strat­for.
The goal of both Amer­ica and Pak­istan will be to root out al Qaeda’s entrenched posi­tions in the law­less North­west Ter­ri­to­ries. Ide­ally, Pak­istani troops will be used for the bulk of the fight­ing, and this is the rea­son for Gul’s denial to the United States.
How­ever, Pakistan’s refusal should be seen as a net gain for both coun­tries. The United States has appar­ently been plan­ning this offen­sive for some time, and with the Bush administration’s his­tory of uni­lat­eral action at the expense of other coun­tries’ sov­er­eignty pretty well known, Pak­istani Pres­i­dent Per­vez Mushar­raf has some cover for going into a region hos­tile to out­side con­trol. He can’t be seen by his peo­ple as acqui­esc­ing to the Amer­i­cans’ wishes, so he denies them access and moves his own troops into the region as a show of strength and sov­er­eignty. He knows full well that the United States will move into Pak­istani ter­ri­tory any­way, and his think­ing is that there’s not a lot the Pak­ista­nis can do to stop Wash­ing­ton. At the same time, because Pak­istan is mak­ing an effort to to root out bin Laden and his jihadists, the White House can’t accuse Musharraf’s gov­ern­ment of not step­ping up to the plate. And — bonus! — any pres­sure on Pakistan’s nuclear pro­gram from Wash­ing­ton will prob­a­bly ease a lit­tle bit. The upshot? Wash­ing­ton gets to act against its real ene­mies with­out desta­bi­liz­ing Mushar­raf, and he doesn’t look like a patsy to his own peo­ple. Also, Islam­abad gets to keep the Bomb, a source of great national pride in Pak­istan.
With this strat­egy, the goal is to have the war against al Qaeda wrapped up some time in 2005.
But back to bin Laden. What will be al Qaeda’s response? Three things: It will to 1) desta­bi­lize or over­throw the Saudi Ara­bian royal fam­ily (a long-held goal), 2) desta­bi­lize Pak­istan or 3) weaken U.S. resolve by mas­sive attacks inside the United States, pos­si­bly with WMD. These strate­gies could be — and likely will be — used together.
In Saudi Ara­bia, al Qaeda could build on its string of bomb­ings and attacks to such a degree that the sur­vival of the cur­rent regime in Riyadh is in doubt. The U.S. would be forced to inter­vene, using the mil­i­tary hard­ware it has and will have in Iraq once the March rota­tion is in motion. (Riyadh is already on high alert for ter­ror attacks dur­ing the hajj.) If al Qaeda can bog down the United States by caus­ing it to stretch its already thin forces in Iraq into Saudi Ara­bia, it will strengthen its hand in Pak­istan, too.
By desta­bi­liz­ing Pak­istan — the two recent assas­si­na­tion attempts against Mushar­raf are prob­a­bly just the first of many to come — al Qaeda makes the United States’ war infi­nitely more dif­fi­cult. With Mushar­raf in con­trol, the U.S. can cut back­room deals that allow it to oper­ate in Pak­istan to attack al Qaeda posi­tions with rel­a­tive free­dom, as dis­cussed above. With a mil­i­tant Islamist _junta_ rul­ing from Islam­abad — a nuclear-armed _junta_, mind you — that’s no longer an option. Can the United States occupy Afghanistan, Iraq _and_ Pak­istan? No.
Finally, al Qaeda may attempt another mas­sive attack on the scale of 9/11. Would mas­sive Amer­i­can casu­al­ties sap the will of the United States? Pos­si­bly. Or maybe not; Sept. 11 didn’t cause the United States to cut and run. Instead, the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon pro­pelled the United States into a war with mil­i­tant Islamists and the fall­out — Iraq, most notably — has divided the West inter­nally and pit­ted the United States against the Mus­lim world. This may have been bin Laden’s main goal all along. What would be the result of another mas­sive attack? The answer depends on how much sym­pa­thy the U.S. could gar­ner from a world that may have exhausted its sup­ply of good­will toward Amer­ica. Instead of a replay of 2001’s sea­son of sol­i­dar­ity, would the United States be seen as reap­ing what it has sown? The Axis of Evil 8-Ball on this one says, “Sources cloudy; ask again later.” If its any con­so­la­tion, bin Laden prob­a­bly doesn’t know either. What is known is that _nothing_ would stop an enraged and wounded Amer­ica from hell­ish retal­i­a­tion.
So for the moment, that’s where all the play­ers stand. Al Qaeda has to demon­strate its effec­tive­ness before the United States starts its offen­sive this year to pre­emp­tively stall any momen­tum Wash­ing­ton may gather. It also has to show its mem­bers and sup­port­ers that it still has the capa­bil­ity to lead the jihad against the West. I pre­dict intense attacks in Pak­istan and Saudi Ara­bia. Oth­er­wise, the United States will attack in Pak­istan and al Qaeda likely will be dealt a death blow and bin Laden cap­tured or killed. That would be a stun­ning set­back for mil­i­tant Islam, what with its spokesman and folk hero felled by the infi­del.
That won’t spell the end of mil­i­tant Islam of course, nor will it mean the end of the ter­ror threat against the United States and the West. Al Qaedaism is more than just the group and it’s more than bin Laden. Smaller groups will con­tinue to exist, oper­ate and net­work. But with­out the charisma of bin Laden — and his web of financ­ing — ter­ror groups affil­i­ated with al Qaeda can be reduced to a chronic, but man­age­able, problem.