I wrote last June that al Qaeda was already on the ropes. I still think so.

Al Qaeda was much more fagile than we thought. I do not predict that al Qaeda will neither attempt nor succeed in deadly attacks inside the US again. I do predict that they will not be able to mount an attack approaching the magnitude of Sept. 11's. They have been hurt too much in personnel losses and interruption of their command and control.

They have also used their element of surprise and the US won't be caught sleeping again any time soon. The down side is that we now have a patriotic right to bias and prejudice. I'd rather wear a bulls eye on my back than a turban on my head in the US right now.

About 19 months ago, Americans were worried about shark attacks and some evil men thought Americans had grown weak. During the war in Iraq, American women flew A-10s, packed M16s in ground combat roles and even the supply clerks fought until they ran out of ammo.

Chill, Dave. I don't think that most Middle Eastern looking folks in the US are experiencing any significant harassment. All you have to do is go to the CAIR website, where they will collect (and hype) any such harassment that does occur. When even CAIR can't claim massive discrimination and harassment, you can be pretty sure it aint happening in any large-scale or systematic way.

I tend to disagree, in part because of the five thwarted attempts to use chemical weapons against targets in Western Europe between November 2002 and January 2003. I also think that because of the nature of the conflict (assymetrical) many Americans have a skewed perspective on the nature of the enemy as well as their state of preparedness and willingness to act.

Keep in mind that 9/11 was roughly two years in the making. The US Embassy bombings occurred in roughly the same time frame. Yet just in the last year we've had Bali, Moscow, and Mombasa (which was thankfully thwarted due to the shooters inability to hit that El Al plane), all of which have been launched under al-Qaeda's aegis. Any one of these attacks could have been the worst terrorist attack of any given year.

I think that we significantly damaged them in Afghanistan and that the capture of Abu Zubaydah pretty much put them out of commission for about three to five months. I fully expect the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to do the same. But as long as the cash keeps on flowing and they still have safe havens, whether in Afghanistan or Chechnya or Somalia or anywhere else in the world, they'll come back sooner or later.

More to the point, I think our initial assessment of the organization's capabilities was by and large inaccurate. If you look at the initial assessment of the group, they were estimated at only having around 3,000 members. Hell, we've captured or killed twice that many and they still keep on coming, if not against us than certainly against our allies.

The link is to the New Rules Set Project of Dr. Thomas PM Barnett at the Naval War College. This pre dates 9/11 and the project involved some people at Cantor Fitzgerald who were killed.

Read The Pentagon's New Map. This is the grand strategy for what the U.S. is doing. You will see why the U. S. went from Afghanistan to Iraq. The U.S. is closing the Gap. We are in for a long war and a much different world.

http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/

Not to be a spoilsport, but where are the Al Qaeda in the reports you mention? I see Saddam Fedayeen, Al Quds, Republican Guard mentioned, all presumptively Iraqi as far as I know.

Well, Thomas, if you're right, perhaps the truth is more along these lines: Al Qaeda promised and promoted terror attacks on the US and its interests when we attacked Iraq, and then failed to fire a single bullet. While some worried this war would act as a recruitment drive, in the end, the Arab Street was/is mostly silent, and Al Qaeda has severely lost face in their eyes due to broken promises and apparent impotence.

About 19 months ago, Al-Qaeda was ramming airliners into buildings. Today, to put it in Texas terms ... Big Hat, No Cattle.

Al Qaeda was not primarily an action group, they were suppliers, planners and financial administrators for a number of terrorist groups - sort of a clearing house. Until they ar reconstituted or replaced a number of groups will have trouble getting anything done. And as we continue to make governments' funding unavailable, they will continue to have problems.

In retrospect, it seems the problem was never al Qaeda per se, but what it represented: the ease of catastrophic terrorism and the existence of states and captive populations sympathetic to it.
America would not have been much of a superpower if we couldn't take apart an organization of a few thousand fanatics whose idea of a successful operation involved blowing themselves up.

The much harder and more dangerous tasks lie ahead of us: draining the swamp that produced these monsters (i.e. the mess in the Mideast, aided and abetted by many states and a wilfully deluded population), and designing a future hardened against even more catastrophic attacks which does not impose large costs on our freedoms and our opportunities.

What is keeping Americans safe from terrorism in a renewed energy in our military and intelligence communities to this threat. Instead of an Administration who cuts defense spending to the bone, then sucks a little marrow out, we have an administration that will look at the nations defense needs and determine a reasonable outlay for those needs.

Our Intelligence communities were decimated with political correctness and liberal bleeding heart fantasies of how intelligence should be gathered and acted upon. Now, after the attack, we have renewed focus and energy.

Why this couldnt have come about after the first WTC attack, or the Terror attack in Saudi Arabia on our military residential buildings, or even after the yemen attack, is for you to ponder, I know who I blame, and my voting in the future will reflect that opinion.

Clinton believed talking long and loud, and whipping twigs here and there for emphasis. Bush apparantly adheres to the Roosevelt doctrine of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.

You're still far safer walking around with a turban than a yarmulke. Gee, I wonder why?

Thanks, Joel, for bringing such subtle partisan analysis to the situation. I'm sure that will be completely helpful.

I think Dan Darling is right in that Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain a potent force. They can continue to operate indefinitely anywhere their operations remain undiscovered, which is one of the strengths of unconventional warfare. Top-down disruption may only be temporary as independent elements seek other routes for funding and direction. At the same time, it's clear they may have used their A team up on 9/11, and many future attacks may be less competently planned, less robustly funded, and ultimately less effective. One one point I disagree: I suspect many, perhaps most, of the 3000 AQ captures are low-level or tangential operatives. Their fates largely serve as an object lesson in the consequences of being a hanger-on, which drives AQ further underground into trusted cells, at a cost to operational flexibility and effectiveness.

Let's face it: Al Qaeda never really developed a defensive capability; they have always relied on safe havens. It's the easy refuge of local rebellions: just relocate to the next country over. In the Muslim world this is often a rival rather than a friend of the regime you face. In Afghanistan AQ thought they had a permanent haven, and that if we invaded we would a) face the same fate as the Russians, b) face a general uprising by a sympathetic population. Saddam, incidentally, had the same mistaken faith in the Arab street.

But people forget that most successful resistance movements have only done so with outside help, in the form of safe havens, funding, training, weapons, and recruits. Vietnam and Afghanistan both represented effective superpower occupations that were opposed with the support of another superpower. This time, Afghanistan and Iraq resistance, such as it was, had little backing locally or otherwise.

I don't doubt that we'll see another 9/11-scale attack someday; it's too easy to pull off. (I'm surprised the only imitators we've seen, though, have been suicides.) But it's also become clear that AQ is the paper tiger here, capable of infrequent terror attacks, but incapable of thinking strategically, politically, and badly misjudging even Arab and Muslim culture. Finished? Hardly. But their wad is shot and their rally has failed.

Fred: Thanks for posting that excellent link, which I hadn't seen before. I don't think it's quite as relevant as, say, the neocon strategy documents from the PNAC and its (watered-down) Pentagon security strategy, but it's a great delineation of some of the philosophical changes in the offing. May we live in interesting times, indeed.

Dan, I'm really glad to see you here in our comments section. I've missed your blogging and your thoughts.

Al Queda already got what they wanted out of attacking the US: a war between the west and the arabian peninsula. His goal now is to destabalize the goevernments that he doesn't want in power in that region. Notice how Osama didn't request attacks against the US in his last message? It is not that Al Queda is weak it is that they have a long term plan which doesn't require attacking the US again. We are moving like pieces from a chess board that he is controlling. Osama wanted Saddam gone. Hizbulla will attack occupying forces in Iraq and then the US will attack Syria. Osama wants a bigger war just as much as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle do. US troops occupying a country on the sands of Arabia are like recruitment posters for Al Queda. You can dismiss what has been happening as weakness but I think you might be underestimating our opponent. Al Queda's biggest problem now might not be its weakness but could end up being competition from a hundred new Bin Ladens. Try looking at what is happening from his point of view.