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| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 |
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ABSTRACT
The Global Terrorist Threat: Is Al-Qaeda on the Run or on the March?
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| Bruce Hoffman |
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Mr. Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Washington, D.C. The following is his written testimony submitted on February 14, 2007, to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities.
Five-and-a-half years ago, 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes and changed the course of history. Just as we underestimated al-Qaeda then, we risk repeating the same mistake now. Al-Qaeda today is frequently spoken of as if it is in retreat: a broken and beaten organiza-tion, its leadership living in caves, cut off somewhere in remotest Waziristan incapable of mounting further attacks on its own and instead having devolved operational authority either to its various affiliates and associates or to entirely organically-produced, homegrown, terrorist entities. Isolated and demoralized, al-Qaeda is thus imagined to have been reduced to a purely symbolic role, inspiring copycat terrorist groups, perhaps, but lacking any operational capability of its own — a toothless tiger.
“Al-Qaeda,” President Bush declared last October, “is on the run.” But al-Qaeda, in fact, is on the march. It has regrouped and reorganized from the setbacks meted out to it by the United States and our coalition partners and allies during the initial phases of the global war on terrorism (GWOT)and is marshalling its forces to continue the epic struggle begun more than ten years ago. More than ever, al-Qaeda’s revival reminds us of our continued failure to heed the advice of the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu. “If you know the enemy and know yourself,” he famously advised centuries ago, “you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” Yet, if there has been one consistent theme in both America’s war on terrorism and our melancholy involvement in Iraq, it is our serial failure to fulfill Sun Tzu’s timeless admonition. The Bush administration’s new strategy to “surge” 21,000 American troops into Iraq is the latest fundamental misreading of our enemy’s mindset and intentions.
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