Panetta Says Defeat of Al Qaeda 'Within Reach'

Hugh Pickens writes "Newly installed Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan, says the United States was "within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda" and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Panetta, who rarely spoke on the record as CIA director, offered few details to bolster his assessment but intelligence officials say that computer files retrieved from Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that the organization was in dire need of money and struggling under persistent American drone strikes on its leadership."

Comments

also

[Anonymous Coward]

And we're also *this close* to winning the war on drugs...

Re:also

[wonkavader]

I think these are fundamentally different things. Al Qaeda is a fairly small, traditionally top-down led group. (Though there are a bunch of "Al Qaeda" groups which popped up on their own around the world which don't fit this pattern -- they're also not really Al Qaeda.) The war on drugs, as ill-conceived as it was in the first place and ill-executed it continues to be, is a war on a huge, flat structure, if you can call market forces on everybody a structure of any sort. We could win the war on drugs, but we'd have to stop thinking it was a war and start seeing it as the economic and social problem it is. We won't do that, of course.

Panetta may be either lying of deluding himself, but we should compare these things.

On the other hand, if tomorrow he says that we're close to beating the Taliban, who are broad and flat, A. it'll be OBVIOUS he's lying or deluding himself and B. the war on drugs would be a really good comparison.

Re:also

[dave420]

Hardly. You seem to be making the same mistakes as a whole bunch of important people - the problem isn't Islam, or even the teachings of Mullahs, but of the persecution of Islam perceived by Muslims. It's not hard to figure out why so many perceive such issues, what with the support of Israel, wars on Muslim soil, the foreign military bases across Muslim holy land, and so on. Just read the Al Qaeda manifesto, and you'll see what they're on about. Pretending they don't have legitimate grievances and just labelling them "whackos" is never going to solve the actual problems. Hatred is taught in some mosques, as there is legitimate reason for many Muslims to really, really, really not appreciate all that the western world has done "for" them. Unfortunately for the US, the western world's doctrine of simply not owning up to selfish behaviour encourages dislike to turn to hatred as each generation passes.

There will be no peace until people are stopped being fucked with. It doesn't matter what religion said people hold (be it Islam in the middle east, or Catholicism in Northern Ireland), as long as they perceive themselves as being brutally fucked, they will act that way. Peace in Northern Ireland wasn't attained by wiping out Catholicism, but by simply talking to those with grievances, realising that everyone's shit stinks to various degrees, highlighting actual grievances, and also highlighting bullshit grievances that are simply not true. Refusing to even admit the possibility of being wrong is clearly not going to help that.

The way I see it.

[mhh91]

There's no way to defeat Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda isn't just a bunch of people, it's an ideology.

As V says, "Ideas are bulletproof".

If the US really wants to defeat Al Qaeda, I think they should help countries that aid them get on their feet, that way they'll stop hating the US and start thinking about whether Al Qaeda is good for them or not for themselves.

Re:The way I see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they should help countries that aid them get on their feet...

Get on their feet?

Al Qaeda exists today (after their CIA support) because of centuries of what the Arab people and Muslims believe was oppression - which they do have a point. As far as the Muslim World is concerned, they have been "disrespected" to use an American term. If you look at the Arab countries, they have been shit on for centuries by Western powers and there is a lot of bitterness and resentment about that.

Then there's the other side. The Arabs and Muslims in general for that matter are stuck in this victimization mentality. And they need to look in the mirror and admit to themselves that they're part of their own problem; which I think is starting to happen - the Arab Summer with all these revolts and protests are a sign that they're saying enough is enough.

What we need to do is support them when we can and stop this horseshit of supporting the assholes of the Middle East or even the semi assholes in Jordan.

We can start by getting rid of the Saudi "royals".

Re:The way I see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way to defeat Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda isn't just a bunch of people, it's an ideology.

As V says, "Ideas are bulletproof".

If the US really wants to defeat Al Qaeda, I think they should help countries that aid them get on their feet, that way they'll stop hating the US and start thinking about whether Al Qaeda is good for them or not for themselves.

If being an ideology was sufficient to make a group invincible, then the Argentinian Montoneros or the Peruvian Shinning Path would still exist. To defeat Al Qaeda is not necessary to annihilate its members or even the ideology behind them. It is simply sufficient to exterminate their global and regional reach and reduce them to strategic insignificance. Then local governments can dispatch them, or let the remains disperse into the wind.

And that, ladies and gents, that's a defeat for them, and a good enough victory for those that oppose them. Victory is not necessary to be total, just sufficient according to the victor's context.

The trick would be to maintain and obtain intelligence from that point on to squash them into oblivion once again should they attempt to raise the group to a significant threat.

Re:The way I see it.

[ShakaUVM]

>>instead applied it to actually helping people get access to food and clean drinking water, helped them set up schools, the amount of good will we would have in the region and around the world would be enormous

You think we haven't been doing that?

A friend of mine was a Lt. in the marines (this is ~2003 or 2004) and was assigned a CNN reporter who was going to follow him around for the day. She showed up, asked what they'd be doing today, and he said they'd be visiting a couple schools that the marines built, where the reporter would get to interview the children, and then on to a place where they'd fixed up the water infrastructure.

She said: "That's boring." And left.

Mission Accomplished?

[number17]

Once these 10 to 20 leaders are dead i'm sure all those people in death squad training camps will go right back to working in McDonalds or some other type of desk job. They definitely have the hunger and skillset to become a corporate executive.

Re:Mission Accomplished?

[RazorSharp]

You mean those death squad training camps that we blew up?

What the hell do you think we've been dropping all these bombs and predator drones on? Al Qaeda's been relegated to nothing but some guys with AK-47s. We've killed almost anyone with money or power. Once we take out the remaining 10-20 leaders, it won't matter who's left. We can pack our bags and go home because everyone who remains loyal to the cause will be too poor to do anything about it and if they try the Pakistani/Afghani governments will deal with them. If they happen to pool some resources together the CIA will take care of it.

Because of 9/11 we've constantly overestimated these fucks. We never should have sent the military to deal with this. The CIA could have dealt with it fine. We should have done what the Israelis did after the '72 Munich murders: assassinate, assassinate, assassinate, and assassinate some more. Sending in ground troops was a gross tactical error. It gave them something to fight. The only military forces should have been the Airforce/Navy dropping bombs and maybe some rangers taking on assassination missions like what we did to Bin Laden. Al Qaeda was nothing but a rag-tag bunch of morons. Bush empowered them by trying to turn them into Emmanuel Goldstein.

Al Qaeda was a reaction.

[the_raptor]

Al Qaeda was a reaction to Arab tyrants propped up by the American government. What has defeated Al Qaeda is the "Arab spring". If there are no corrupt tyrants and those Arab countries can actually develop their economies Al Qaeda have nothing to offer except religious extremism. Which most people don't want. Most people no matter their religion just want to be able to provide for their families and live in peace.

While "Al Qaeda" will be around for decades, without a support base of poor Arabs their ability to carry out any serious attack is nullified.