Frum On Al Qaeda's Mobility

Conservative blogger David Frum highlights the problem with fighting a very mobile terrorist organization like Al Qaeda with conventional military tactics (e.g. invading/occupying Muslim countries with large ground forces) in Frum Forum.

Q: Wait a minute. You just mentioned Somalia as a place where al Qaeda operates. If Libya breaks apart, could al Qaeda find a home there?
A: Yes indeed. When Iraq descended into civil war, local Sunni radicals organized themselves into an al Qaeda of Iraq. Many Libyans traveled to Iraq to fight with them, against the Americans. So yes, the potential is there.
Q: That would be a big, big problem, wouldn’t it?
A: You mean to have al Qaeda terror cells operating in a huge, disorganized territory a short boat ride across the Mediterranean from Italy? Yes, that qualifies as a huge problem.
Q: Is it possible that we have defined our strategic problem incorrectly? President Obama has put 100,000 Americans into Afghanistan in order to deny al Qaeda a base in that one country. But maybe our strategic problem is to deny al Qaeda a base in any country?
A: You could put it like that.
Q: Which would mean that concentrating so much American force in one place — and such a remote place — risks missing larger and nearer dangers in places like Libya and Yemen?
A: The usual answer to that is “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Q: Is that a good analogy?
A: No.

The 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign ridiculed the Kerry/Edwards campaign for viewing counter-terrorism as "a law enforcement problem" when that is exactly how terrorism has been more or less successfully treated in Europe. The alternative approach (originated by Bush/Cheney in Iraq) has been disastrous. As blogger Andrew Sullivan notes in a recent post, this has been a key component in our present fiscal problems.

The US is broke, its military over-extended, in two ill-conceived wars that are still being waged at a staggering human and financial cost. Maybe we should ask Lawrence one simple question: what would you cut from the budget to afford such an open-ended military endeavor? If you cannot answer that one, you really have learned nothing from the disasters - fiscal and military - of the last decade.

--Ballard Burgher