In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States set out to destroy Al Qaeda. President George W. Bush vowed to “starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.”
Seventeen years later, Al Qaeda may be stronger than ever. Far from vanquishing the extremist group and its associated “franchises,” critics say, U.S. policies in the Mideast appear to have encouraged its spread.
What U.S. officials didn’t grasp, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, in a recent phone interview, is that Al Qaeda is more than a group of individuals. “It’s an idea, and an idea cannot be destroyed using sophisticated weapons and killing leaders and bombing training camps,” she said.
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WNU Editor: The problem with Al Qaeda is that even though there may have 20,000, 30,000 or even 50,000 die-hard fighters in their ranks ... it is their support network that is worrisome. There are millions of Muslims who agree and sympathize with Al Qaeda's extremist ideology, and as long as Al Qaeda's has this base of support, they will never be completely defeated.
1 comment:
@WNU: Strongest or Stronger, not more stronger :) It's like taking a superlative and then putting whipped cream on top
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