Monday, January 15, 2007

Is calling them killers enough?

Here is a snippet from Counterterrorism blog (see links on RHS), which has some elements of interest (I've taken-out what I found to be overstatement):

The overwhelmingly negative assessment of the U.S. counter-terrorism strategy laid out by John Negroponte ... was notable for its candor and the end to the happy talk that has often made its way into assessments on the struggle against the jihadist threat. What is amazing is that, five years and billions of dollars after 9-11, we are falling behind in the conflict. We are not even really competing in the field of ideas, and we have done little to mitigate the broader problems.

Part of the problem is that there is still no general consensus on who the enemy is and if a war exists. Until we decide that, little else of import can happen.
link


From this assessment, one gleans that the effort to "raise the costs" on al-qa'ida and to get them on-the-run has had mixed results. The DNI suggests that they continue to plan and to be organized.

The lack of a consensus suggests that leadership has failed to come up with a strategy to confront radical Islam, either in general or one that has produced a consensus approach. This may be suggestive of a failure of imagination (poor conceptualization of the key problems and their solutions), a weak implementation, a genuine lack of consensus/understanding, or the difficulty (complexity) of that task.

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