A war al Qaeda is losing

While some in the media argue that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself and is able to operate in much the same it did before 9-11 its failure to launch a successful attack in the US and the failures of many of its attacks in Europe recently suggest an organization whose B team shows a lack of depth and a lack of intelligence.

Jeff Jacoby makes the case that our side is winning.

IF THERE WAS one thing we all knew after Sept. 11, 2001, it was that another massacre was coming. The next terrorist attack on US soil, it was asserted time and again, was not a matter of if, but of when.

Americans weren't the only ones who expected Al Qaeda to commit another slaughter. Al Qaeda did, too. Earlier this year, terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed that in addition to 9/11, he had been planning to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Empire State Building, and to blow up US embassies and nuclear power plants.

None of those attacks occurred. In the six years since 9/11, Islamist terrorism has led to scenes of horrific carnage in, among other places, Madrid, London, Bali, Istanbul, Israel, and Russia. Yet there has been no catastrophic attack on the American homeland - something no one would have predicted in 2001. What explains such good fortune?

There is no definitive answer to that question. But surely the place to begin is with the belated recognition that we were at war.

The jihad against us didn't begin on 9/11. It had started long before, with the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Years of Islamist bombings, hijackings, and hostage-takings followed, but few Americans recognized that war was being waged against us by a determined enemy that cried "Death to America!" and meant it. In a New York Times column two months before 9/11, the former deputy director of the State Department's counterterrorism office pooh-poohed as "fantasies" the belief that "the United States is the most popular target of terrorists" and that "extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism."

The attacks of 9/11 ripped away such comfortable misjudgments. President Bush declared that we were at war with terrorism, and likened it to the global wars against Nazism and Communism. The US government overhauled its counterterrorism operations, moving aggressively to disrupt and damage Al Qaeda's maneuvers abroad and to uproot would-be jihadists at home. After years in which terrorism was regarded as a legal crime to be prosecuted after the fact, the Bush administration made preemption the overriding goal. Instead of waiting for terrorists to strike, the government - armed with expanded powers to seize records, monitor communications, and search homes and businesses - would strike first.

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Those who try to make the case that we are losing usually wind up arguing that we should go back to the failed lawfare strategy of the Clinton administration where we would try to find terrorist and try them and in the process disclose how we gathered evidence against them so they could avoid capture and preemption in the next attack. It also explains why many of these people want to give th Amendment rights to an enemy plotting mass murder of non combatants.

There generosity for war crimes is pretty amazing, but it comes from their aversion to warfare. They would deny us the benefits of warfare and hamstring us with the problems of lawfare so they can feel better about themselves. They are willing to accept the casualties of the next attack and put us on the strategic defensive. They will get a lot more Americans kill if they prevail politically. They will also be responsible for genocide in other parts of teh world caused by their "peace" movement.