“If George W. Bush is remembered by getting America stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s looking like Obama wants to be remembered as the president who got America stuck in Yemen.” These words, from a March Internet address by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric and al-Qaeda leader now hiding in Yemen, sum up well the August 14 New York Times report in which they appear.
The report, entitled “Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents,” described in some detail the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush’s war on terrorism, with particular attention paid to the United States’ efforts in Yemen, where at least four airstrikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives have occurred since December. Yet the campaign, said the Times, “began without notice … and has never been officially confirmed.” None of the strikes could be considered conclusive victories for the Americans.
The first strike, on December 17, hit a supposed al Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province. The initial report from the Yemeni government claimed that its air force had killed about 34 al-Qaeda fighters and that others had been captured elsewhere.
This highlights the major difficulty of a “war on terrorism”: Terrorism is a tactic, carried out by small bands of individuals in widely dispersed locations. Al-Qaeda does not have a home base or a central committee for the United States to capture and then declare victory over the organization. Capturing or killing an al-Qaeda operative here and there will not put an end to the group’s threat. The war, after all, started out in Afghanistan and now encompasses a dozen or more countries on two continents. The more terrorists Washington kills, the more there seem to be — and the more spread out they seem to be.
