Killing Al Qaeda leaders may not end terror.

Yeah, I know, we all knew that, but I found this poorly written article interesting mainly in that it actually questions US foreign policy orthodoxy. Exceedingly rarely are news stories published questioning US foreign policy tactics as to their effectualness, unless there's the "newshook" of a political angle, a dem criticizing repub or vice versa.

It gives a couple of examples of movements that haven't ended with the death of their leaders, and offers Peru's Shining Path as the only example where it has. Interesting, but I wish they would provide a larger sample, because, of the "movements" listed, Shining Path was the only one possibly primarily financed with outside monies. (drug monies)

That would make sense to me, that "terror" movements of which represent genuine political movements have a greater momentum and thus survivability. For a political version, look at the collapse of the Ukrainian "revolution."

Also, there is an implied criticism of Israel's terror programs. Often in the US the Israeli terror defense is held up as model from which the US should work from, but that seems to ignore one glaring fact. Terrorism in Israel has not been controlled over the years. The Israeli model is based on mitigating terror, not on resolving it's causes.

That's somewhat similar to the argument I made on Friday, that the US is solely interested in mitigating the terrorism of Al Qaeda, not in addressing its root causes and resolving it. It's like a company doctor treating the fever but not the disease because he needs the workers to keep going out into the malarial swamp so that the company can make money.

Or maybe more presently, a mine owner who takes the safety precautions that are affordable, and accepts the risks to the workers beyond that because the profits must go on.

I just found this article interesting in that I read it as somewhat heretical in the current media presentations of the "terror problem." It made me think, and I love that.

ALSO RELATED: Today, the NYTimes has an excellent piece on the failure to limit Al Qaeda along the Pakistan border region with Afghanistan. The region of six million sounds like it's turning into another Taleban run region like Afghanistan was. Lots of frightening and amazing detail. Not gonna blog it cause it's front page and everybody probably saw it, but if you didn't it's essential reading to gain a "state of play" sense of how the war against Al Qaeda/Taleban is really going.

ALSO: Justin Raimondo at Antiwar has a really good thought provoking piece. Two main points of interest to me are: 1. That Iraq has tied down the bulk of US ground forces with only the small addition to the local insurgency of a couple hundred "foreign terrorists." 2. That it is an administration goal to portray Bin Laden as crazy so as to separate him from his criticism of US foreign policy. As is often the case, an interesting look from another angle.