In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership.
While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.
All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.
"On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he said.
The anti-war side has always said that fighting fanatics just creates more fanatics. This has annoyed me for years. First of all, in the long run, fighting ineffectively creates more enemies. Fighting ineffectively simply angers the enemy and prods them to fight us without putting any fear of defeat in their minds that will discourage them.
Second, the nature of war makes it a simply stupid claim to make. That is, for any conflict that lasts any amount of time, each side will increase the resources devoted to the fight in order to win. It's called "mobilizing." We don't say our entry into World War II made more Nazis just because there were more Germans under arms at the beginning of 1945 than the beginning of 1942.
If we hadn't fought back against al Qaeda, why would the enemy exert themselves to mobilize unneeded terrorists? They were doing just fine in gaining support from the Moslem world at their then-current level of effort.
But when we mobilized our efforts and put them up against the enemy's efforts first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, we started to fight effectively rather than just take the terror hits, launch a score of cruise missiles at empty tents, indict some leaders, and put a couple on trial. As we fought the war, we began to beat the enemy despite their mobilization of resources.
And now we are seeing the jihadi enemy being defeated in Iraq and elsewhere, with Moslems distancing themselves from the faltering jihad.
But as with the ability of the anti-war side to proclaim defeat simply because the enemy fought and reached deep to match our efforts, we can't say that the decline of the enemy means victory. We are winning. But until we win, it isn't over yet.
UPDATE: Recounting how bad our Left is at understanding military affairs:
The left's analysis of jihadism has been proved incorrect at every turn. It argued military power would be ineffective against the terrorists. Wrong. It argued that intervention in Iraq would energize bin Laden's movement. That movement is in shambles. The left argued Iraq was a lost cause. It isn't. The left argues that a "war on terrorism" is futile, that defeat is inevitable, because terrorism is a "tactic," not an enemy. Nonsense. President Bush has demonstrated through perseverance and (more often than not) sound policy that the war on terror can be won. And right now we're winning it.
The ignorance of our Left has been only matched by their certainty. My only question is whether their conviction that we must lose will switch to advocacy to ensure defeat even as their predictions are shown to be obviously wrong.
