[LTG Jacoby] We think al Qaeda in Iraq remains a big problem, and they are greatly diminished since the days of just a few years ago. But they are still able to generate these high-profile attacks that we're concerned about. The frequency of attacks, the scale of the attacks -- not like we've seen in the past -- but the ability to generate a high-profile attack now is causing concern, and I would say it's the targeting of the attacks which causes us the most concern.
And as I said in my opening statement, clearly they're going after targets like civilian population centers, where civilians are meeting, where they're conducting their daily lives. They're doing that to discredit the Iraqi security forces. They're doing that to try to incite sectarian violence.
I believe the Iraqi people have rejected that. We have not seen resort to sectarian violence because of these attacks. But it remains a concern. I also believe that al Qaeda is still supported to some extent, much less than in the past, from outside of Iraq. It is mostly a homegrown version of al Qaeda in Iraq. But it remains a challenge.
And two, al Qaeda has a minimal presence in Afghanistan, as our commander there states, with their efforts mostly in supporting the Taliban:
"I do not see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now," McChrystal told reporters at the Dutch Defense Ministry, where he met military officials.
But he warned that Osama bin Laden's network still maintains contact with insurgents and seeks to use areas of Afghanistan they control as bases.
"I do believe that al-Qaida intends to retain those relationships because they believe it is symbiotic ... where the Taliban has success, that provides a sanctuary from which al-Qaida can operate transnationally," he added.
Funny how fighting al Qaeda where they chose to fight us (in Iraq) instead of fighting them where we drove them out from (Afghanistan) constitutes taking our eye off the ball.
Given our grand strategic error of fighting in Iraq instead of Afghanistan, as those giants of military and strategic thinking on the left charge, it is funny that our war would have so much success against al Qaeda:
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida is under heavy pressure in its strongholds in Pakistan's remote tribal areas and is finding it difficult to attract recruits or carry out spectacular operations in western countries, according to government and independent experts monitoring the organisation.
Speaking to the Guardian in advance of tomorrow's eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, western counter-terrorism officials and specialists in the Muslim world said the organisation faced a crisis that was severely affecting its ability to find, inspire and train willing fighters.
Its activity is increasingly dispersed to "affiliates" or "franchises" in Yemen and North Africa, but the links of local or regional jihadi groups to the centre are tenuous; they enjoy little popular support and successes have been limited.
But there's more to this whole ball issue and keeping our eye on it. As the absence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan so ably demonstrates, Afghanistan isn't really our basic problem in the Long War:
The impulse that took America from Kabul to Baghdad had been on the mark. Those were not Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their financiers were Arabs, and so were those crowds in Cairo and Nablus and Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. Kabul had not sufficed as a return address in that twilight war; it was important to take the war into the Arab world itself, and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw. He had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a lesson was made of him.
Afghanistan was once the main field for fighting al Qaeda. They had a sanctuary in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan was never the source of the problem. Fighting al Qaeda wherever it is is not distraction--even when al Qaeda inconveniently challenged us in Iraq. And we'll have to fight al Qaeda elsewhere even if we completely win in Afghanistan--for al Qaeda does not currently sit in Afghanistan.
Not that we shouldn't fight in Afghanistan. We should. We don't want al Qaeda to seep back into Afghanistan to plot against us. Nor do we want Afghanistan to become the rear area sanctuary for al Qaeda to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The ball is not Afghanistan. The ball is radical Islamo-fascism. Keep our eye on that.
And ultimately, we need a little less panic and a lot more patience and resolve if we are to continue defeating our real enemies.
