Zap! Pow! Al Qaeda on the Run!

This is total crap. 

One of the new memes being pushed by the Bush Administration to bolster their shaky performance in Iraq is this idea that the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan is operating in Iraq. 

And wouldn’t you know it?  One day after releasing an unclassified version of the NIE, which despite intense efforts at sanitizing and spinning could not hide the fact that Al Qaeda is no worse for wear after six years of the Global War on Terror, the Bush Administration announces capturing the “leader” of the Iraqi version of Al Qaeda. 

Their official story is full of information which conveniently enough echoes the contention that the real Al Qaeda has been giving orders and controlling/influencing the Iraqi Al Qaeda.  So we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here or in Afghanistan/Pakistan.  So pulling resources out of Afghanistan/Pakistan and into Iraq wasn’t stupid.  It was far-sighted. 

Puh-leeze. 

Here’s what the Bush administration still doesn’t get about Al Qaeda.  It’s decentralized.  You can’t cut off the head and expect it to wither away. 

The Bush administration has been guilty since the day they took office of seeing terrorism as a state-sponsored threat.  It is exactly why they didn’t take the threat of Al Qaeda seriously in the first place.  And they are still applying the top-down state model to any analysis involving them. 

They replaced the government in Afghanistan and expected Al Qaeda to go away.  They pressure the government in Pakistan to “crack down” on Al Qaeda on the Western border, as if the Pakistani government could simply stop it if they wanted to.  They keep talking about capturing the “No. 2″ or the “No. 3″ guy in the organization. 

This is basically a reflection of the analysis we’d use to construct war plans against the Soviets.  Everyone knew that the Soviets ran their organizations from the top down, with little or no room for improvisation on the ground.  That is why we employed a “cut off the head” strategy against them in our war planning. 

We are used to constructing our foreign policy and war planning against centralized governments.  Well, Al Qaeda developed a management style that placed a premium on improvisation and adjustments on the ground.  It was an absolute necessity when fighting against vastly superior resources of the Soviets in the ’80s and everyone else in the ’90s.*  Less organizational control meant more operational security and a better chance to survive even the biggest setbacks. 

So take the recent news with a hefty grain of salt.  The fact that they are spinning the story in this way, in my opinion, belies a total lack of competence and progress on the ground. 

* For simplicity’s sake, I’m conflating the Afghan fighters from the ’80s with Al Qaeda, even though as a distinct entity Al Qaeda did not exist until the early to mid-’90s.  Al Qaeda was heavily influenced by the success of the mujahideen and so the point I am making is still relevant, even if technically anachronistic. 

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