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Al Qaeda: Dead or Alive?

The Gathering Storm, June 3, 2008

Rick Santorum

June 3, 2008

My friend and EPPC colleague Pete Wehner has an excellent post on Commentary' s Contentions blog on the very promising transformation of sentiment in the Muslim world towards Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Pete cites two cover stories in The New Republic by the same author and just seven months apart that signify radically changing conditions in the health of Al Qaeda. Wehner points out that the first story, written by Pete Bergen in October, 2007, was titled "War of Error: How Osama bin Laden Beat George W. Bush" but this month the tune had changed. In this week's article "The Unraveling: The jihadist revolt against bin Laden ," Bergen and co-author Paul Cruickshank write, "The repudiation of Al Qaeda's leaders by its former religious, military, and political guides will help hasten the implosion of the jihadist terrorist movement."

Pete was, of course, way out in front of this transformation and cited evidence of it back in October , following the publication of the first Bergen piece:

...the most important ideological development in the last year is that the Sunni population in Iraq has turned against al Qaeda's ideology and concomitant brutality. The "Anbar Awakening," which is spreading to other regions in Iraq, is a sign of Muslims' rejecting radical Islamist ideology. . . . This doesn't mean we have decisively won the "war of ideas" in the Islamic world; that clash is still unfolding and will for some time to come. But Bergen's claim that we are losing is belied by the most significant and encouraging ideological development we have seen in a great long while.

Wehner's continued observation of this positive development comes as the CIA has issued a very positive assessment of the terrorist organization. CIA Director Michael Hayden recently told the Washington Post, "On balance, we are doing pretty well. Near strategic defeat of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for the Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for the 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.... The ability to kill and capture key members of the Al-Qaeda continues, and keeps them off balance."

The good news didn't stop Al Qaeda from being cited as the primary suspect in a car bombing of the Danish Embassy in Pakistan yesterday that killed nine or claiming responsibility for an attack on an oil refinery in Yemen that was, according to the terrorists, "used by the tyrant (Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh) to supply fuel to the crusaders in their war on Islam." Nor does it negate the worrisome developments of a new dialogue between Iran and Al Qaeda.