Al-Qa'ida, Down But Not Out

. . . so sayeth David Ignatius, in an interesting piece in yesterday's Washington Post.  Ignatius is one of the 2-3 journalists most tapped into the U.S. intel community, and reports that U.S. officials say three themes emerge from their reading of Osama bin Laden's computer files:

1. "Bin Laden retained until his death a passion to launch a significant attack against the United States."
2. "Bin Laden was a hands-on chief executive, with a role in operations planning and personnel decisions, rather than the detached senior leader that U.S. analysts had hypothesized."
3. "Bin Laden was suffering badly from drone attacks on al-Qaeda's base in the tribal areas of Pakistan."

Number one elicits a "well duh" response, as nobody thinks bin Laden was the type to start thinking about a second career in retirement.  "You know, I think it is time to leave the destruction of the Crusaders and Zionists to the younger generation . . . I'd really like to start painting, or maybe macrame."

The last two points are important, however.  There is clearly an important debate to be had about how much control bin Laden exerted over al-Qa'ida a decade after 9/11, since this has implications for: a) both how effective the various counterterrorist policies of the past decade have been; and b) how the terror network will operate with his demise. 

Taking the second point first, although I think Ignatius overstates Zawahiri's isolation (which actually sounds a lot like the role of American vice-presidents), he definitely comes down on the side of those who see bin Laden as still being heavily involved in al-Qa'ida's operations, which suggests his death will significantly weaken the organization. 

But I think the first question is one that is too often overlooked, as the important question may not be how involved he was  in al-Qa'ida operations on May 1, 2011, but rather whether bin Laden was as effective on May 1, 2011, as he was on May 1, 2001.  After all, like any organization al-Qa'ida apparently had a succession plan, and will continue to operate with Zawahiri sliding more or less effectively into bin Laden's central role.  Consequently, the key to our security (and the reason we invaded and remain in Afghanistan) is to disrupt al-Qa'ida's ability to conduct offensive operations against U.S. strategic interests.  From all the evidence available, bin Laden was still plotting attacks, but almost none of them came to fruition in the decade after 9/11.  Even those that were successfully executed were nowhere near the scale of the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks, or of the scale that was imagined in that black day's wake. 

If so, it could be argued that killing bin Laden was not critical to al-Qa'ida's demise, as he had already been rendered strategically ineffective.  Ignatius' third observation, the effectiveness of the "Drone War" in Pakistan, goes a signifciant way towards explaining this strategic success.

None of this is to say the world isn't a better place with the Saudi at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, but rather that we should be careful about placing too much emphasis on a single event in the broader struggle against al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.