By Brigitte L. Nacos
Newsweek/MSNBC
and the Washington
Post report on a new U.S.intelligence estimate titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the
West" that concludes, “the terrorist network is gaining strength and has
established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training
and planning attacks.” According to CIA deputy director John A. Kringen,
"We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications.” The
other day, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told the Chicago
Tribune that “he had a ‘gut feeling’ that the country was entering a new period
of increased risk this summer.” Nobody can deny that sooner or later there will
be terrorist strikes or at least attempts inside
U.S. borders by actual members of
the central al-Qaeda organization or inspired groups, cells, or individuals.
But it is disconcerting to learn that the intelligence community is sure of
more training, more money, and more communications on the part of al-Qaeda without
seeing also, finally, where and how to go after the real 9/11 culprits. Neither
the military efforts in Afghanistan nor the Iraq war and occupation prevented al-Qaeda from regrouping. It doesn’t really matter
whether the core organization is again involved in providing terrorist know-how
and money to foot-soldiers or whether al-Qaeda Central is inspiring autonomous
cliques of extremists around the world and recruits them into the terrorist
cause. Maybe both. But it is the growth of recruits without actual links to
al-Qaeda that is more troubling because these amateur terrorists are harder to
spot and harder to stop than professional terrorists.
Whatever details the classified intelligence report contains, it is obvious that the nearly six-year war on terrorism has been a failure in that it did not reduce but increase the number of terrorists and the number of major terror attacks around the world. While it is true that the American homeland has not been struck since 9/11, there was no attack in the six years preceding those strikes either.
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