The twilight of the al Qaeda gods

The Belmont Club:

Juan Carlos Zarate, described as a senior US counterterrorism official by the Telegraph is quoted as claiming "that the demise of al-Qa'eda is in sight because its failure to adapt its violent ideology and tactics has provoked growing dissent across the Islamic world." This claim is not as outrageous -- even to those who believe ideologies are invincible -- as it might at first seem. While Islam has maintained its general militancy and aggressiveness over the centuries, the lifespan of individual fanatical movements is distinctly shorter. It is possible that the world has not seen the last of radical Islam; but it may be true that it has seen the last of Bin Laden's crew.

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Yet if Zarate were correct in claiming that the US has, for the moment, beaten back al-Qaeda to what would it be due? To two things. The first is to inevitable excesses of the Mad Mullahs themselves. A movement like the Jihad eventually sustains itself by exactions and impositions on the population. A movement which aims at paradise can have little regard for daily concerns. Al-Qaeda gets real old, real quickly when you actually have to live under it. The reason it retains the sympathy of the Western intelligensia is because they don't have to live under it.

The second reason for al-Qaeda's decline has been their defeat on every battlefield on which they have been found. And as important as the material losses to them have been, far more serious has been the loss to their prestige. They have gone from godlike warriors who can topple skyscrapers in Manhattan to helpless bugs who are effortlessly incinerated despite their incantation. And that battlefield helplessness, to their adherents, is subliminal proof of the power of a greater magic: "the strong arms of science". It is the triumph in this battle of conjury, this wizard war, which in some sense has been the true metric of victory.

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Currently the Iraqis are rounding up al Qaeda's remnants around Mosul. So far over 1000 have been taken into custody. Iraq has gone from al Qaeda's central front in its war against the US and the seat of the new Caliphate to the graveyard of its ambitions. It is a significant strategic defeat in a place where a year ago the Democrats were ready to hand it to them. There forces are also losing in Afghanistan and having trouble finding a true "safe house" in Pakistan. While what is happening in Iraq should be an embarrassment for al Qaeda, it should also be an embarrassment for the Democrats. Hat tip to Larwyn.