"There is nowhere of consequence in the world where al Qaeda can claim victory."

Waziristan. Though it's open to you to claim that this will have no consequences.

But on the whole I agree that Osama Bin Laden is in no position to be talking down to Hezbollah in context of the Palestinian jihad.

Control of Pakistan's nukes, in whatever form it takes, as Musharraf collapses and Islamists allied to AQ and the Taliban take over, trumps Iraq.

Iraq is the one place America could win. Afghanistan is the one place where defeat is guaranteed.

Look at a map. Iraq can be supplied by the sea, endlessly. Manpower advantage. Afghanistan is bordered on the West by Iran, the South and East by Pakistan, and the North by Uzbekistan and a tiny sliver of China.

Pakistan can and eventually will (under Islamists) cut off the ability to resupply the expeditionary force in Afghanistan. This is why sensibly the Pentagon has not done more than as Yon says, make Afghanistan and special forces hunting lodge. We have no way to put in much less supply any amount of troops there, and anyone we put in would eventually fall back into Chosin Reservoir fighting-retreats to Uzbekistan and/or China. Moscow has made it clear to Uzbekistan that the rickety air-bridge to Afghanistan will not be expanded.

So far Osama has not been proven wrong in his initial calculation that he would win in Afghanistan against the US. The consequences of our defeat there and Pakistan's nukes in the hands of AQ will be world-changing, and not in a good way.

AQ (and also Iran) have a way of using car bombs and assassinations to achieve political ends. Mostly, it has worked for them. An outgrowth of tribal raiding worldview. A nuclear truck bomb in NYC for example, with bin Laden claiming credit will guarantee a strategic US response, i.e. wiping out any/all nations thought to have a hand in, Pakistan at a min. And by wiping out I mean killing half or more of the population. Otherwise more US cities will die. That's the terror logic of nuclear weapons -- and why none have been used since 1945.

I would say Osama will get his war of civilizations, tragically, though he won't like how it turns out. The tribal raiders forget that nuclear truck bombs don't hit carrier groups, boomer submarines, SAC, or ICBMs. And PC-restraint will get cast off like a wet coat when it's survival mode. If anything the anti-Israel rhetoric is designed IMHO to rally Muslims world-wide (who are Osama's true constituents) for "action" after a US attack.

It would be folly to write Osama and AQ off. His friends in ISI alone guarantee that he is an exceptionally dangerous man and his organization even deadlier. Even without nukes it would not be difficult to kill masses of Americans in very public attacks.

Back in 2004, I wrote an essay How To Defeat Terrorism, which suggested some of the methods that have been used successfully in the surge. I predicted that, if these methods could be used effectively (and if the terrorists continue to apply terror as their weapon), the people would turn against the terrorists. As we have seen.

[I have some memory of posting this on WoC back then, but a quick search didn't find it. I recall getting some heckling for my advice, "Don't get killed". This is explicitly intended not for self-protection, but to demonstrate the impotence of the terrorists, which is much more harmful to them than military action.]

This is not a complete answer to all the world's problems. (Sorry!) But I hope it's a significant step toward learning to fight fire with things other than gasoline.

Jim Rockford [#2] falls prey to the common confusion between state and non-state actors. AQ is a terrorist gang. Pakistan is a state, with all the benefits and vulnerabilities of that status.

Suppose AQ succeeds in setting off a nuke in a US city, with millions of casualties.

If we were to retaliate by killing half the population of Pakistan, we would become international pariahs, and deservedly so. We would also cement our status as targets for terrorists from all over the globe, and thereby achieve even more of OBL's dream.

Notice that we did not overthrow the Taliban government of Afghanistan in revenge for the 9/11 attacks. We overthrew them because they refused to give us access to AQ, the criminal gang that was actually responsible for the attacks. This is a difference that makes an important difference. It's also a difference that is highly relevant in Pakistan, under various plausible scenarios.

In case of a successful attack on the US, I would hope that our leaders, whoever they may be at that time, will understand clearly these differences.

Donald,

I agree with your conclusion that AQ is not a significant threat to Israel. I would argue that it never has been and that the conditions you describe of a weak AQ (I would say weakened, as well) are conditions that have pertained all along. The defeat of AQ in Iraq is something that was only possible because of a temporary "surge" in strength that it enjoyed as a direct, though unintended, consequence of the US invasion. Otherwise there would have been nothing to defeat. AQ was always a weak horse. It should have been a dead one years ago.

AQ has never been able to attract a significant number of people to act directly in its "cause." Probably no more than 100 people were involved in the 9/11 attacks. The danger posed by AQ is that of what a small number of people can do, which we know to be enormous. The palestinians already have a full-fledged nationalist movement, to which every single palestinian is passionately devoted. They don't need bin laden. (what could he do, encourage them to suicide bombings....the use of terror as a tactic?..they're way ahead of him on that curve) Bin laden is just desperate to regain the importance he briefly had (this is of course just a speculative opinion). Had we not invaded Iraq, he'd just be a prematurely old man in a cave and his pronouncements would not generate much interest. Iraq extended his importance. And, as you say, that is once again on the wane.

Kuipers -- what do you propose to do to prevent further nuclear attacks on a US city after the first one? Use international law? Grovel so "Muslims will like us?"

Back in the real world, everyone knows that a nuclear attack on the US unless shown to be disastrous and so destructive that it amounts to suicide, it will be repeated.

As failure to respond to the murder of US diplomats by Arafat in 72 led to the Beirut Bombings. Which led to the 1993 WTC attack. Which led to the 1994 attack on Buenos Aires (in retaliation for Argentina stopping help for Iran's nuke weapons program). Which led to Khobar Towers. Which led to the Embassy Attacks in 1998. Which led to the Cole.

Which led to 9/11.

After a nuclear attack NO ONE WILL CARE ABOUT: "being a pariah" or international law or the "good opinion" of the world which is useless anyway. Russia, Iran, China, Sudan, Castro, Kim all commit daily horrors and get on UN Human Rights commissions. No one cares about any of that like no one cares about the Holy Roman Empire.

People in the US will want: A. MAKE SURE IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN, B. Payback.

We got rid of the Taliban in revenge for 9/11. Pure and simple.

Furthermore there is no distinction between state and non-state anymore. Pakistan is not a state or a nation but a squabbling collection of tribes and killers. It isn't Switzerland or even Russia. It has no sovereignty over even it's own borders. Half the nation is under AQ/Taliban control (Waziristan Accords). The Pakistani people ARE our enemy. They have certainly formed the nexus for terror acts around the globe against us and our allies, particularly in the UK, where Pakistani doctors formed the Glasgow and London bombing plots.

If a US city is nuked, and the US is not seen to react in a terrible way, other US cities will be nuked. Until finally the US reacts in an even more terrible way.

ALL conflicts escalate. With aims and actions escalating as the conflict drags on longer. Bin Laden merely continued the long tradition of modern terroristic jihad against the West, weakened by elitist PC and concern for "nice to haves" instead of "must haves" i.e. national security.

Bin Laden aims for global leadership of Muslims. To do this he has stated as his aim the destruction of the US as he believes he destroyed the USSR. His method -- mass casualty terrorism. I would not count him out in the ability to kill perhaps millions of Americans.

what do you propose to do to prevent further nuclear attacks on a US city after the first one? [#6]

We are entering a profoundly dangerous period in history, when any number of technologies are becoming available that will allow small extremist groups to cause large numbers of casualties. If you aren't already scared, you should be. Because there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do to prevent these attacks, once they start.

In particular, a genocidal attack against Pakistan by us, in response to millions of US casualties, will make subsequent attacks on us more likely, not less. You are proposing to fight fire with gasoline. Hoping that a horrific revenge attack by us will make sure that we never get attacked is simply fantasy.

(At the very least, can't you see Hindu extremists planting a bomb, and framing the Pakistani's, to use our big guns to kill their enemies? Or pick any other extremist group who might want us to do their dirty work.)

Did you read my essay, How To Defeat Terrorism, pointed to in [#3]? (I don't seriously expect you (Jim Rockford) will like it, or even understand it, but perhaps someone else will.)

The point there is that the only way we can defeat terrorism is for the ordinary people in various places must trust the USA enough to turn in the terrorists before they get a chance to attack. This is beginning to happen in Iraq.

We depend on that trust, and the support of the ordinary people. Terrorists act to erode that trust. If we bomb indiscriminately, even in response to our own casualties, we lose that trust, and the terrorists gain freedom of action. A measured and appropriate response is essential. Not no response. Not running away. But not massive and horrible.

Shouldn't Israel be concerned with a dirty bomb of some sort being detonated inside Israel by an al Qaeda affiliate moreso than little attacks?

Yes. Dirty bombs are probably overrated as weapons, but for such a tiny nation as Israel they could be a disaster. Short of an actual nuke or the meltdown of their reactor, a dirtbomb has to be top of their nightmare list.

"Shouldn't Israel be concerned with a dirty bomb of some sort being detonated inside Israel by an al Qaeda affiliate moreso than little attacks?"

Not really, since a multitude of little attacks are more likely and can be fatal too. Historically they've often led to concessions, leading to more little attacks. And there are other aspects to the problem, such as diplomacy. International biases, for good and bad, had a lot to do with the destruction of Rhodesia and the rise of the Mugabe regime, and with the end of white South Africa. Loss of American support, a likely result of Arab war-making of the kind we see all the time, would kill Israel.

A lightning bolt might kill you in a spectacular way, though the odds are it won't, and pneumonia might kill you in a mundane way, but if you've got a fairly advanced case of pneumonia, that's your problem.

I disagree- a dirty bomb wont kill many people but it would cause massive evacuations for months if not years. The economic impact on a state as tiny as Israel is incrediable.

Consider that are about three million Jews living in the immediate vicininty of Tel-Aviv, a mass, long term evacuation would be a major disruption economically and civically.