Is the Defeat of Al Qaeda “Now Within Reach” as President Obama Suggests?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

While the first anniversary of Osama in Laden’s death is reason enough to assess the status quo of the terrorist organization he founded and chaired, President Obama’s claim that the defeat of Al Qaeda “is now within reach” deserves a closer look.

There is no doubt that the demise of bin Laden was the most devastating blow against the original Al Qaeda organization or Al Qaeda Central, a close-knit group of extremist Arabs, some of whom had fought in Afghanistan against Soviet troops during the 1980s--with covert support by the CIA.  Targeted relentlessly by pilotless drones in the mountains of Pakistan, the bulk of Al Qaeda Central’s core of sub-leaders serving under bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, now the sole Al Qaeda boss, was decimated.

Although the president’s opponents, most of all in the neo-conservative camp, try hard to paint him as another Democrat who is weak on defense and national security, the truth is that Obama has been far more decisive in fighting Al Qaeda militarily than his Republican predecessor. The lethal raid against bin Laden was merely the exclamation mark on a successful military campaign against Al Qaeda Central members and their Taliban allies.

So, if President Obama meant to say that the defeat of Al Qaeda Central is within reach, his optimism is justified.

But Al Qaeda Global is another story.

The problem here is that Al Qaeda’s ideology has proven far stronger and more durable than Al Qaeda Central. Al Qaeda as powerful idea has spread like a virus around the world. While fanatic Arabs and Muslims, terrorists and insurgents in many countries claim to have direct ties to Al Qaeda Central and have sworn allegiance to the original group, what they mostly or solely share with the original bin Laden clique is the idea of fighting U.S.-led Western powers and their allies in the Muslim world, what bin Laden repeatedly described as a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, cultures, and, most of all, religions.

President Obama is surely aware of this. After all, he himself has authorized increased drone strikes against self-proclaimed Jihadists and Al Qaeda allies in Yemen and against Al Shabaab in Somalia. While these and many other groups in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in the Western diaspora articulate the same ideas as Al Qaeda, they are autonomous and not at all affiliated of the original group.

Unlike Al Qaeda Central, the cells and nodes in the global network of terrorists which are inspired by bin Laden and Al Qaeda present a far greater problem for counterterrorist strategies and tactics than the hierarchically organized original group.

Al Qaeda Central may be on the verge of defeat. But the defeat of Al Qaeda as inspirational force is not within reach.

Comments

[Brigitte]

Eric, to begin with, you were right to push for the ROTC returning to the Columbia campus. Students should not only free to join but also have the convenience to do so without traveling to some other campus.

Second, yes, you got it right with Obama in that he intensified attacks via drones and otherwise on Al Qaeda and allies in various locations. I was not in favor of the troop surge in Afghanistan but rather for Vice President Biden's concept, namely, to forget about nation-building but to have special forces fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Military in the ISAF alliance as well as civilians working in Afghanistan agree that the biggest problem in Afghanistan is corruption that reaches from the highest to the lowest level, in Kabul and in the provinces. The tremendous sums of money we put into that corrupt system has not moved us closer whatever objectives Washington has now and had in the past.
We should continue fighting the remaining terrorists and their supporters but Afghans themselves must rebuild their country and establish a stable society.

[Eric Chen]

Why I've called it the Al Qaeda phenomenon since the 9/11 attacks.

I understand the phenomonen dynamic as an activist myself. At Columbia, I started the campus ROTC movement in Spring 2002. In 2002-03, I was the main conceptual and organizational actor responsible for establishing the grassroots student-led ROTC campaign. Yet, although every student who took part in the 2002-03 campaign had long before graduated and departed campus, my goal was won when Columbia formally normalized relations with ROTC in Spring 2011.

By 2011, my leadership influence was nil. The majority of the student ROTC advocates on campus likely wouldn't have recognized my name. But in the years after we graduated, the CU ROTC phenomenon had continued to evolve and grow from the base my classmate advocates and I had established. I didn't need the ultimate victory to be wrought by my hands in order to fully enjoy it.

Osama bin Laden's actual reach may have been degraded by our long-war efforts by the time we killed him, but as a phenomenon, bin Laden had already accomplished what he first set out to do.

Off-topic: I'm writing a paper for a national security law class right now called 'Regime Change in Iraq in Clinton's 3rd term' - the public discourse really did greatly distort that Bush's Iraq policy was an inherited extension of Clinton's Iraq policy. While looking through my blog for material, I revisited our differing views on Obama's 2008 inauguration address, where I recognized Bush and Obama were kindred on foreign policy. You disagreed with me at the time.

So, Professor - did I call that one or what? Me to you, Jan 24, 2009 on this blog: "Obama's inaugural address was unreservedly liberal-hawkish. What stood out the most in the speech was that Obama was hardly circumspect about an aggressive transformative interventionist international role for America, what was called neo-conservative or liberal imperialism when pursued by the last administration."

Granted, I didn't anticipate then that President Obama would so heavily favor a kill-first policy compared to the capture/interrogate policy favored by the Bush administration.