In the past half an hour the news has broken that the US was able to successfully target al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Afghanistan over the weekend and kill him with an air strike.
The only significant Al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan is Ayman Zawahiri https://t.co/mHKJ9J4OKY
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) August 1, 2022
Ayman Zawahiri, one of the founders of Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden's deputy and the leader of the organization in recent years was the target of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, per source briefed on the issue
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) August 1, 2022
The Associated Press has the emerging details:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A CIA drone strike has killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Current and former officials began hearing Sunday afternoon that al-Zawahri had been killed in a drone strike, but the administration delayed releasing the information until his death could be confirmed, according to one person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.
White House officials declined to confirm al-Zawahri was killed but noted in a statement that the United States conducted a “successful” counterterrorism operation against a significant al-Qaida target, adding that “there were no civilian casualties.”
President Joe Biden is expected to discuss further details of the operation in a 7:30 p.m. EDT address to the nation.
Biden planned to speak from the balcony off the White House Blue Room as he remains in isolation in the residence while he continues to test positive for COVID-19.
More at the link!
This is the most interesting take I’ve seen yet:
I am a long-standing critic of U.S. drone strikes.
Having said that, Ayman al Zawahiri is an anti-Christian, antisemitic, anti-Shia mass murderer. If he’s been killed, I won’t be shedding any tears for him & nor will most Muslims. So much blood on his hands, Muslim & non-Muslim.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 1, 2022
A profile of Zawahiri and informed speculation on who might succeed him as al Qaeda’s leader after the jump.
This is CNN’s profile of Zawahiri:
CNN) — Ayman al-Zawahiri emerged from a privileged upbringing in Egypt to become one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.
The bespectacled 52-year-old surgeon formally merged his group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with al Qaeda in 1998, becoming leader Osama bin Laden’s personal physician and closest confidant.
Their group has been blamed for numerous terrorist attacks worldwide, mainly on Western targets, including the attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.
After the attacks, the U.S. State Department offered a $25 million award for information leading to al-Zawahiri’s apprehension.
An Islamic fundamentalist, al-Zawahiri joined the outlawed Egyptian Islamic Jihad group as a teenager, being jailed twice for helping plot assassinations of two Egyptian leaders.
He eventually became the group’s leader, which was dedicated to the creation of an Islamic state in Egypt, and in the 1980s he joined Mujahedeen fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
There he befriended and joined forces with bin Laden. Before and after September 11, al-Zawahiri appeared on numerous video and audiotapes calling for attacks against Western targets and urging Muslims to support his cause.
“Ayman al-Zawahiri is effectively Osama bin Laden’s No. 2,” said CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen. “He is his closest adviser.”
As a 16-year-old medical student in the 1960s, al-Zawahiri became involved in the Islamic fundamentalist movement rolling through Egypt.
Authorities arrested and charged him with being part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to overthrow President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Due to his charisma and fluent English, al-Zawahiri emerged as a sort of international spokesman for the imprisoned Islamic activists.
“We want to speak to the whole world,” he said in 1983. “We are Muslims who believe in our religion. … We are here, the real Islamic front and the real Islamic opposition.”
By the time al-Zawahiri got out of prison, he had moved into the top ranks of the militants.
He left Egypt in 1985 and made his way to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he worked as a surgeon treating the fighters who were waging holy war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
That is where Zawahiri met bin Laden, a prominent Mujahedeen leader and who also had left behind a privileged upbringing to join the fight in Afghanistan. The two became close, linked by their common bond as “Afghan Arabs.”
After the war against the Soviets ended, Zawahiri was unable to return to Egypt.
Instead, he joined bin Laden in Sudan, where he planned terror activities, including an attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan. He was also linked to assassination attempts on several Egyptian politicians.
Ali Mohammed, a fellow Egyptian and Islamic Jihad member living in the United States, testified al-Zawahiri actually visited the United States twice on fund-raising trips in the early 1990s, including to a mosque in Santa Clara, California.
The group, meanwhile, stepped up its violent campaign against the Egyptian government, blowing up its embassy in Pakistan in 1995 and trying to assassinate several top Egyptian politicians.
After reuniting in Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri appeared together in early 1998 announcing the formation of the World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders — formally merging the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda, bin Laden’s group.
The two issued a fatwa, or decree, that said, “The judgment to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilians or military, is an obligation for every Muslim.”
“Al-Zawahiri’s influence on bin Laden has been profound,” Bergen said. “According to a number of people who know both men, [al-Zawahiri] helped [bin Laden] become more radical, more anti-American and more violent.”
Some Egyptians traced al-Zawahiri’s anger toward the United States to what many Afghan Arabs felt was the CIA’s betrayal to support their cause after the Soviets left Afghanistan and the country slipped into tribal anarchy.
Others date al-Zawahiri’s wrath to 1998, when U.S. officials pushed for the extradition of a number of Egyptian Islamic Jihad members from Albania to stand trial in Egypt for terrorism.
In early August of that year, the al Hayat newspaper office in Cairo received a fax from Egyptian Islamic Jihad stating: “We should like to inform the Americans that, in short, their message has been received and that they should read carefully the reply that will, with God’s help, be written in the language that they understand.”
On August 7, suicide bombers destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. U.S. authorities later indicted both al-Zawahiri and bin Laden on charges they masterminded the terror bombings.
An hour later, U.S. forces launched cruise missiles in retaliation for the embassy bombings, but al-Zawahiri and bin Laden escaped.
A few days later, al-Zawahiri defiantly called a reporter and warned there would be more attacks. There were, including the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 and a year later the attacks on New York and Washington.
Much more at the link.
Here is a recent piece by Dr. Tricia Bacon, PhD and Dr. Elizabeth Grimm, PhD published at the International Centre for Counter-terrorism on who might succeed Zawahiri:
Questions of succession loom large for al-Qaeda. By most accounts, al-Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri is alive, but in poor health, and thus questions of succession loom large for the group. This succession—when it occurs—would mark only the second leadership transition for al-Qaeda in its more than 30-year existence. During his time as al-Qaeda’s leader, al-Zawahiri persisted in following the blueprint developed by Usama bin Laden. In so doing, he provided a degree of consistency for the group, which has faced unprecedented counter-terrorism (CT) pressure since 2001. At the same time, his approach to leadership and the CT environment the group faced made it difficult, perhaps impossible, for al-Zawahiri to rejuvenate the beleaguered organisation. Such are the trade-offs of what we call a ‘caretaker leader’. While many have criticised al-Zawahiri’s characteristics as a leader, we argue that rather than focusing on al-Zawahiri or his potential successor’s personality traits, the more critical question to examine is what type of leader al-Zawahiri has been and what type his eventual successor could be.
Usama bin Laden’s leadership is well-documented, as the group’s founder, but the leadership role of his successor has been less explored. Why does this matter? Succession is a critical juncture that all terrorist groups must reckon with if they survive long enough. These transitions can potentially threaten the very survival of the group, or at least force a reckoning of how to function in the founder’s wake. Based on our forthcoming book, Terror in Transition, we put forward an analysis of where the group stands right now, what role al-Zawahiri played in al-Qaeda, and what possible roles the next successor might fill. We conclude with counter-terrorism implications for each possible type of successor to help guide action against the group following this transition.
Snapshot of al-Qaeda today
Despite extensive criticism of al-Zawahiri as uncharismatic, fractious [p.256], and overall incompetent [p.47], al-Zawahiri has been a steadfast steward of bin Laden’s legacy for al-Qaeda—leading some to comment that, “if Osama bin Laden were alive today, he’d likely be a happy man.” The al-Qaeda of today has, primarily through its affiliates, expanded geographically, increased its strength in places like Yemen, Syria, and sub-Saharan Africa, and remained a leader within the jihadist community. But al-Qaeda core has experienced significant losses. Though it now enjoys safe haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, the US Intelligence Community assesses it lacks the capability to conduct major transnational attacks, a hallmark of al-Qaeda’s approach.
Al-Zawahiri: Leader of al-Qaeda
Past experience offers less insight than one would expect into what kind of leader al-Zawahiri has been for al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri has functioned very differently at the head of al-Qaeda than when leading his previous group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). During his tenure as emir of EIJ, he engaged in a series of terrorist attacks in Egypt that alienated its constituency, exacerbated internal divisions, and provoked intense CT pressure—all of which forced EIJ to abandon its founding mission [p.10-11] in Egypt and eventually merge with al-Qaeda.
Unlike the disruptive changes he made in EIJ’s tactics and mission, al-Zawahiri did not opt to fundamentally change al-Qaeda. Instead, he reinforced bin Laden’s vision by “set[ting] in motion… a widespread awakening in different parts of the Muslim world” and embracing a global mission prioritising the US rather than returning to a narrow focus on Egypt. He continued bin Laden’s invocation that jihad was an individual duty incumbent on all Muslims. Overall, al-Zawahiri’s difficult personality and lack of charisma did not necessarily change, but the type of leader he was did change several times during his tenure as the leader of EIJ and then al-Qaeda, which points to a need for a way to assess successors that moves beyond personality characteristics.
While al-Zawahiri was the clear successor to bin Laden, there is debate about who will succeed al-Zawahiri. For example, there has long been speculation about the eventual leadership of Saif al-Adel, a veteran Egyptian commando and long-time member of al-Qaeda who was once tasked to work with the equally abrasive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Given his extensive experience as a military operative and his role in operational planning, which reportedly included opposition to the 9/11 attacks, it is possible he could serve as a fixer for the group, a leader who changes the how. However, al-Adel has historically preferred to keep a low profile in his military and intelligence roles, pointing to a possible, though less likely, future as a figurehead if he becomes emir. Little is known about his current activities, but recent UN reports assess that if he tries to openly relocate to Afghanistan, he may face resistance from the Taliban government, given the international pressure his move would cause.
Others have speculated that Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi, head of al-Qaeda’s Media Committee, may take the reins instead. For his part, al-Maghribi is al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law, reflecting a familial relationship similar to the one which once made Hamza bin Laden, Usama’s son, previously the most eligible heir to al-Qaeda’s leadership before his death. Such authority and prestige can be passed down [p.173], and caretakers can emerge in a group where the potential successor possesses familial bonds with the founder or when the successor has faithfully served under the previous leader. These familial bonds—as well as his experience in running al-Qaeda’s global media—may give him the “bona fides” to assume this leadership role.
Finally, precedent also exists for groups to choose a dark horse successor, as al-Shabaab did with the successor to its founder, Abu Ubaydah. Some such successors in al-Qaeda are known already to law enforcement and intelligence agencies—such as Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, an Egyptian leader operations commander, or Amin Muhammad ul Haq Saam Khan, the former security coordinator for Usama bin Laden—while others remain unknowable. While it is uncertain who will rise to the top spot, our analysis of al-Zawahiri and his variation as a leader demonstrates that even knowing the individual provides only so much information about the type of leader he will be. Therefore, we argue that it is less important to ask who al-Zawahiri’s successor will be, and rather to ask what type of leader he will be.
Potential Future Leadership Directions for al-Qaeda
Given the uncertainty around the next leader and the possibility that even a known leader may adopt a very different leadership role once in charge—as al-Zawahiri did—we present the possible leadership directions for al-Qaeda, as well as the CT options based on each role.
Much more at the link.
Open thread!
Steeplejack
GQP anti-Biden framing: “He died with a drone, not from a drone.”
Baud
How many Republicans on the list?
Jackie
President Biden is on a roll! Covid aside, what a great week!
Baud
@Jackie:
And he did it while isolating!
Elizabelle
Just saw that. Amazing. Could never keep up with the #2s and #3s, but Al-Zawahiri was memorable. And, until this strike has been confirmed, quite long lasting.
He was a physician, surgeon apparently. Always disturbing when the learned take up terrorism.
Biden address to the nation at 7:30. Interesting.
japa21
It takes a Democratic administration to get the job done. Always.
Elizabelle
@japa21: Yes. Economically and internationally.
But the dweebs who answer polls always chirp that Republicans are better with the economy and military matters. Not.
JoyceH
Just waiting to see what Trump’s sour grapes reaction is going to be – it’ll be no big deal, who cares, that guy he got (that nobody had ever heard of) was WAY more important, etc etc…
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
No, no, no, wrong country. They’re waiting to succeed Putin.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
The runners up need someplace to go though.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
That wasn’t very sporting,
using real bullets.
Ninedragonspot
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
my favorite comment of the day
raven
Xin Loi motherfucker.
UncleEbeneezer
And now Mehdi Hasan will get right back to listing all the ways that Biden, Dems, Garland, DOJ have failed us today…
Searcher
It really says something about the US/Afghanistan relationship/power differential that we can just kind of send a military drone to blow up someone and no one is really worried about the consequences, between “We’re already at a floor for relations” and “There’s nothing they can practically do about it.”
Spanky
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
Wait a minute. There is another …
raven
@Searcher: Bin Laden was in Pakistan and it didn’t seem to matter then. Lie down with dogs you get a hellfire up your ass.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Al Qaeda says they’re going to bury al Zawahiri on a golf course
Baud
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
For the tax break, of course.
Mai Naem mobile
TFG was getting paid by the sponsors of terrorism and Biden was taking care of killing terrorists. Pity that doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Geminid
@Spanky: The Iranians may have a drone for him. They’ve promised revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guard leader Solemeini. They could find volunteers; Solemeini was a revered figure.
Elizabelle
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Laughing.
Jackie
Reportably, no civilian causalities.
This will either tamp down the expected republican one year anniversary debacle (their words, not mine) of the USA leaving (abandoning) Afghanistan, or not.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Searcher:
The Taliban helped out. They’re equally glad to be rid of him. Kandahar rules = Realpolitik.
James E Powell
@Steeplejack:
Nice one, Steeplejack.
James E Powell
@Mai Naem mobile:
How about:
Republicans attacked America’s democracy; Joe Biden attacked America’s enemies.
Jackie
@Mai Naem mobile: A great campaign slogan, though!
I hope we hear that and similar the next three months!
Baud
@James E Powell:
That’s quite good.
Spanky
@Jackie:
By definition, anyone within the blast radius of al Z is not a civilian.
Jackie
@Spanky: True dat.
Dangerman
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Likely. Let this be a lesson to not fall behind on your utility payments in Afghanistan.
Missed him at Tora Bora. Misted him this time.
Jackie
Does anyone here have the fortitude to check in on Fox? I’m not the one lol
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@JoyceH: Or he’ll take credit for it and say it was his administration that did all the real work to set it up for Biden.
Spanky
@Dangerman: Dubya has never adequately explained why he backed off when we had him pinned down in Tora Bora
(ETA Pronoun overload, but you get the drift.)
different-church-lady
With that, and the sentencing of that insurrectionist, it’s a bad day for terrorists all around.
Bill Arnold
@Jackie:
I would very much appreciate a transcripts-only feed for Fox News. It still would be annoying but much faster to scan and much less annoying that smug right-wing talking heads.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Dark Brandon is on a roll!
Mike in NC
Finally! Only took 20 years to smoke this piece of shit. I heard there was a $25M bounty on his ugly head.
New Deal democrat
All of the significant actors in the 9/11 plot have now been killed or captured.
The authorization to use force is by its own terms now moot, and should be terminated by Congress.
TaMara
@UncleEbeneezer: God, he is insufferable, isn’t he…
UncleEbeneezer
@TaMara: He is when the topic is the 1/6 investigations, that’s for sure.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jackie: Andrea Mitchell just said this is some vindication for Biden (or something like that) for all the criticism he received for ending the war in Afghanistan. That’s a good sign.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Almost happened at the end of 2021. Maybe this will give it a new life.
Dan B
Whiplash going from reading about Nichelle Nichols to Al Zawahiri. Polar opposites of humanity.
Jackie
@UncleEbeneezer: That it is!
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: Yeah, I wonder how that whole terrorist thing squares with the Hippocratic Oath, personally.
Jay
@Miss Bianca:
no different than swearing an oath to the Constitution of the United States while Republicaning.
Another Scott
@Spanky: Didn’t Rumsfeld or someone similar say that they backed off so that the Afghans could get him, as it was very important for cultural reasons for them to take care of him?
Let’s see…
John Kerry’s Foreign Relations committee report from 2009:
Imagine that.
Grr…,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@raven: Because we had a democratic president. No Republican would have touched OBL while he was in Pakistan. Of course no Republican would have touched OBL if if he’d been walking down down Pennsylvania Avenue with a sign on his head saying I “did the 911 attacks.” They loved OBL for his value as our national boogie man. I bet when the news came in that he was dead, most Republican politicians cried.
chrome agnomen
Fox News: just crisis actors
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
Technically speaking, most physicians these days don’t swear the Hippocratic oath; it’s been superseded by more modern ethical standards. I also don’t know for sure that physicians in other cultures have an exact equivalent. That said, I can easily imagine someone deciding the ethical oath they took as part of their profession has to take second place to some higher calling.
Mike in NC
@Another Scott: Tommy Franks was our worst general until Mike Flynn popped up.
prostratedragon
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Always thought they would have been just as happy to get rid of Bin Laden if a face-saving way to do it could have been found. Then the fools started out by bombing Khandahar, I think it was.
prostratedragon
@James E Powell: Ooo. Is there somewhere to send that?
Geminid
@Mike in NC: Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor wrote an excellent book on the planning and execution of the 2003 Iraq invasion, titled Cobra II (2004). Gordon was a NYT miltary correspondent and Trainor was a retired Lt. General, and they had a lot of good sources in the military and the civilian side of the Pentagon. Gordon and Trainor said that at least as far as the aftermath of the Iraq war went, Tommy Franks just wasn’t that interested; he was looking ahead to his imminent retirement.
They also had a lot to say about Donald Rumsfeld, basically that he was a bully and a maniac.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
That was the invasion in a nutshell. Nobody was overly concerned with the aftermath. They figured we would install a puppet government and everything would go more or less back to the way it had been, except the government would do what we wanted instead of what Saddam wanted. Then we could withdraw our troops with minimal fuss. It’s not as if this was some novel concept. We had done more or less the same kind of thing everywhere from Chile to Honduras to Indonesia, so why not Iraq?
Steve in the ATL
@James E Powell:
You forgot to add “said no one ever!”
Confidential to Steeplejack: zing!
Betty
@Jackie: I daw on Twitter that Brett Baier (sp?)on Fox stated that it was a big deal. No criticism from that one at least.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: According to Gordon and Trainor, the actual commander of the invasion force, McKiernan(?), was very concerned about the aftermath. He wanted to stay on but he and his staff were rotated out. Then the ranking commander in Iraq was the head of the 1st Armored Division, who had spent his recent career in Europe. This was Rumsfeld’s doing I think. Rumsfeld looked down on the Army commanders and their expertise and thought they were too conservative in their thinking.
Rumsfeld had been a fighter pilot back in the day, and he believed that precision guided munitions had transformed warfare. Gordon and Trainor also point out that Rumsfeld had been a varsity wrestler in college, and he adapted the technique of wearing opponents down to his bureaucratic fights. He relentlessly whittled down the attacking force and “offramped” followon forces including a number of Military Police units that could have stemmed the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad.
Geminid
@Betty: Bair is an honest man, maybe the last one at Fox now that Shepherd Smith and Chris Wallace are gone.. I think the lady Pentagon correspondent is honest but she might not be there anymore.
Another Scott
@Geminid: The generals not being concerned was a reflection of the doofus guys in the big chairs.
LATimes (from 2004):
Yeah, W took care of him, there were no issues with Al Qaeda and bin Laden after the US overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan…
Grr…,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
I should have been more precise: none of the people who were making critical decisions cared too much about the aftermath. I can kind of understand it. They thought toppling Saddam would be like overthrowing some Banana Republic dictator in Latin America, where we could install our puppet and pull right back out. Maybe that would have worked if everyone had agreed on that as the plan. Instead, there was also the crew who wanted to try to set up an actual democratic government. We needed to pick one or the other. Instead we got the worst of both worlds: a commitment to stay and completely revolutionize Iraqi society but only enough resources to install a puppet and get the hell out.
Carlo Graziani
OK, let me ask a question, with the premise that I’d like to invite serious answers only: from the perspective of counter-terrorism costs and benefits, and of suppressing the threat from groups like AQ, does this really matter?
Set aside the great politics for a moment, and the satisfaction of taking down an enormous asshole who totally had it coming.
Also, let’s invite anyone (Adam?) who knows the broader spectrum of counter-terrorism actions and pressures (I certainly do not) to situate the effectiveness of this one action in comparison to, say, cyber, or Treasury ops, or international law enforcement, or other things.
My point is that operations like these also have costs. Thoughtful intellectuals such as Mehdi Hasan may not be incensed, but such actions may function as recruiting tools elsewhere, whereas more low-profile actions do not. Also, I take the Biden Administration at it’s word that there were no civilian casualties this time, but if so, this is the exception rather than the rule, which is the very risky aspect of these operations, and the reason that their cost is potentially always high (Hasan alludes to this). In addition, the guy was apparently incompetent, by the reckoning of CT experts, and hence a liability to AQ as long as he remained alive.
So, other than the visceral, what is the true CT value of Al Zawahiri’s assassination? And does it outweigh the costs?
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: The (above) Wikipedia list of post-9/11 attacks, and the list of attacks pre-9/11 by Al Qaeda show the value of continuing to go after them. I think Biden’s right to say that we will hunt people like that who attack Americans no matter wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.
The whole world and whole world order is threatened when military-like actions are undertaken by non-state actors. There have to be severe consequences for those doing such things. “War is politics by other means.” Terrorist attacks aren’t politics (there are no ambassadors; there are no tariffs; etc.) – its organized crime and worse.
Look at what’s been going on in DR Congo and elsewhere in Africa. The region is rich in critical materials for electrification and other advances, but criminal warlords are slaughtering people to enrich themselves. The world has many interests in fighting them.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
artem1s
@Carlo Graziani:
sending a message to the assholes who are yucking it up and playing golf on a terrorist’s dime is pretty good value. that it is happening this week might not be entirely coincidental. the Saud royal family have a decision to make about the sociopathic murderer that is currently in charge of the family’s money.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: The Gordon/Trainor book gives a really good account of how Paul Bremer screwed things up. The Army had Jay Garner coordinating the reconstruction. He had commanded the U.S. mission that aided the Kurds after the first Gulf War, and had a well thought out plan and an experienced staff. Then Kissinger associate Paul Bremer parachuted in and it seems like Cheney or Rumsfeld or both picked him to override Army leadership.
Bremer’s decisions, especially the order dissolving the Iraqi Army, appalled Army commanders. This was done after the U.S. had dropped scores of thousands of leaflets telling Iraqi soldiers that they would not be punished for Saddam’s crimes. The Iraqi officers and soldiers were humiliated. Bremer’s apologists say, “well, they had all gone home anyway,” as if the order “Muster for Pay” would not have brought them back to their posts. The resulting security situation crippled attempts to rebuild the nation’s basic services, civil authority and political system. Nineteen years later they still barely work.
Garner left, and pretty soon McKiernan and his staff, soldiers who had spent years in Centcom, were replaced by officers with no experience in or knowledge of the area..
Cobra II, Gordon and Trainor’s book on Iraq invasion, is really worth reading. It details the planning process from the 9/11 attack right up to the invasion and the weeks afterwards. Their epilogue describes the growth of the insurgency that began in the first days of the invasion and then was supercharged by the angry discharged Army soldiers.
They also project several possible outcomes, from a weak but viable state to sustained civil war. And a darker one: the rise of a charismatic leader who masters the chaos and unites an aggressive, expansionist Iraq behind him, like Saladin did centuries before.
That still may come to pass, because this story isn’t over. We’ve just stopped paying attention to it..
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: Taking away Afghanistan as a failed-state base of operations for AQ is in no way comparable to retail assassinations of AQ leaders, which is what I’m asking about. To be clear, I am not calling into question all US policy ever with respect to AQ, the Middle East etc., (although, as we can all agree, over time a great deal of it has involved bone-headed policy). I am asking specifically whether hunting down and assassinating terrorist leaders and publicizing the fact passes a CT cost-benefit analysis. In other words, what is the evidence that we decrease the risk of future terrorist attacks by such tactics?
Ha Nguyen
@Carlo Graziani:
Oh, please. This attack is due to the well known principle of an eye for an eye. Cost benefit studies need not apply.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: I wasn’t clear.
My answer is: Yes it is worth it.
My impression is that attacking leadership is the most common way to end the activities of these violent non-state actors (e.g. the Red Brigades, the Shining Path, the SLA, and all the other groups that were active in the 1970s and later). Each of these groups was a product of their times, of course, but AFAIK their activities didn’t end until their leadership was rendered ineffective (prison, death, surrender, etc.).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Andrya
The one criticism that I would have of Biden’s speech is that it sounded like we were only going after AAZ because he killed Americans. I think some mention should be made of the non-Americans he killed. The 1998 attack on the Nairobi embassy set fire to a bus. I saw a picture of a Kenyan mother, holding a toddler, trying unsuccessfully to escape from the burning bus. To this day I feel sick whenever I think of it.
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: Mm. Ok, maybe, The publicity still strikes me as counter-productive, though. If we attribute some kind of management and glamour value to these guys, then killing tnem zeros the management value, but publicizing the killing just creates another martyr, and a memetic recruitment poster for circulation in regions with too many men age 16-25 with no education, no prospects, and plenty of fertile anger.
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if OBL could have been snatched secretly and deniably, and just “disappeared”. The effect on AQ might actually have been more frightening, and the propaganda value to AQ of OBL as a martyr would have been much less.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: Getting the news out quickly is important.
I don’t know if you remember, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. (Franco lingered for weeks/months and my (apparently faulty) recollection is that the official announcement of his death was delayed for quite a while.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Montanareddog
From the OP:
CNN:
From Drs Bacon and Grimm:
No byline for the CNN analysis, that I can see on the clickthrough, to allow a credibility assessment but such a contradiction undermines my faith in both the CNN and the academic analyses
prostratedragon
@artem1s: Good point!
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Why, I oughta . . . 👊💥!
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Taking out Ayman al-Zawahiri definitely outweighs the costs. It’s all the other hundreds of drones strikes aimed at low level suspected terrorist grunts, which often results in innocent lives lost & the associated blow back, that do not necessarily outweight the costs. As far back as the Obama Administration, there was valid criticism that the US was adopting a military tactic – drone strikes – in lieu of a comprehensive strategy to counter the growth of violent Islamic extremism.
In any case, al Qaeda has become something of a has been, because it was not perceived to be extreme enough. The more serious threat is now the Islamic State franchises, which is causing havoc across parts of Africa.
Jinchi
@Ha Nguyen: Targeting Al Zawahiri is not “an eye for an eye.” He has been actively engaged in terrorist attacks and lead a terrorist organization.
Targeting his mother or his grandkids or his hometown without regards to their own guilt or innocence would be “eye for an eye”.