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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Disruption of Al Qaida

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

President Obama has said that his goal is to "disrupt" Al Qaida. Some might take that as an admission of defeat as he is not trying to "destroy" Al Qaida.

It is not.

The problem is that Al Qaida is not a country. It does not have a government we can force to accede to our will by force of arms or negotiation.

Al Qaida is an organization. As long as there are two guys and a computer connection to the internet, Al Qaida will exist. There is always going to be someone so full of hate and belief in the justness of his cause that will keep Al Qaida alive.

Don't believe it?

Perhaps you believe that National Socialism is dead, that Communism has been permanently defeated by the fracturing of the iron curtain.

It is not so. Nazism exists to this day, even in Germany where the mere display of its symbols is cause for arrest much less here in the United States.

And, yes, there are still those who are devoted to Karl Marx's ideals.

So Al Qaida will be with us for the foreseeable future in one form or another.

The questions are how big a body count will it be able to foster (Communism is still racking up a body count, and has always made National Socialism seem like pikers by comparison, but that does not mean that Nazis are still not killing someone here or there, just that there lack of control of a government to do their killing makes it really hard to keep up with the Communists).

So Al Qaida will be with us, at least because it is fashionable for young men in predominately Moslem lands (and some even in non-Moslem lands) to visit the web site and speak about how "bad-A** they are to each other and on their own message boards.

So, Obama is correct when he says his goal is to keep Al Qaida disrupted. That does not mean that he will not go all out to get Osama if he gets good intelligence on his exact location (taking Osama out would probably be disruptive, but it depends on what Osama's current health and ability to shift the levers of power in his organization is, there are some doubts about both).