Now, it is one thing to have an argument about whether [the war on terror is] over. It’s quite another to claim that our reaching this happy day — during which we can even be debating whether victory has been achieved — has nothing to do with the war on terror of the previous decade. Al-Qaeda is not subsiding on its own. It is not retiring from the field, having seen the error of its ways. It is not disappearing because of some inexorable law of history or nature. It is in retreat because of the terrible defeats it suffered once America decided to take up arms against it, a campaign (once) known as the war on terror.
As an aside, one of the things that annoys me about those claiming that the war on terror was unnecessary is that to make this argument they rely on the fact that we are winning because we have spent a decade waging relentless war on those terrorists. These fools, like Beinart and Douthat who Krauthammer mentions in the article above, don't seem to have much of a grasp of cause and effect. People like them came out of the woodwork when the Soviet Union collapsed, too, believing it proved that the entire Cold War was unnecessary. I'm sure there were some people claiming in June 1945 that the whole war against Nazism was a mistake since the death of Hitler proved he'd have fallen anyway without our help. You'd mock someone who leaves a hospital with a ruptured appendix removed if they claimed the absence of that organ proved the operation was unnecessary. But in foreign policy, such people are called nuanced deep thinkers. Well, not by me. But that's how they make their living. (Again, unlike me.)
Anyway. So we need to kill jihadis in our current war. That isn't the only part of the war on terror, since killing the ideology is most important in the long run. But have no doubt that killing jihadis is a critical part of defeating the ideology. And we need information to kill jihadis in precise missions. News came out that we did indeed grab electronic storage devices and other material. Strategypages discusses this:
The recent raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan yielded, as expected, a massive amount of data. Anyone with any connection to al Qaeda, and particularly bin Laden, knew what that meant. In short, you had better run, and stay away from anyone else so connected, until the aftereffects of all this damaging data have run its course. This is all because of what happened in Iraq. Most Americans are not aware of this intelligence angle, but the word has gotten around in terrorist circles.
There will definitely be more good jihadis coming out of this raid. Evil won't repent and go home on its own. So we do what we must.
