Follow Up Post

Fareed Zakaria has to go show off his large brain with three essential readings:

Al Qaeda is over
Vindication of Obama's strategy
What did Pakistan know?

They raise some points that I would like to amend or clarify some of the previous two posts.

I made a point about the Bush Administration focusing on state sponsors of terrorism because they were only capable of seeing things through a state v. state model.  Zakaria points out that groups like Al Qaeda need either the absence of a state (Somalia or Yemen) or a state sponsor (Afghanistan under the Taliban and perhaps Pakistan).  The problem with the Bush strategy, as Zakaria points out, is that they chose the wrong state to engage.

(On a separate note, some on the Left like Glenn Greenwald has said that - like the killing of Saddam Hussein - bin Laden's death does not make us safer.  That was expertly taken apart here.  The reason getting Saddam didn't make us safer was that Saddam didn't attack us.  We attacked him.)

So, state action is still an important part of the overall strategy against terrorism, but the small, directed actions such as that undertaken against bin Laden are likely the wave of the future.  Zakaria doesn't reference it, but the decision for Petreus to take over the CIA is clearly the full realization of the Obama Strategy.

Zakaria also posits, as I did, that some part of the Pakistani government is responsible for bin Laden (and presumably others like Zawahiri) to live comfortably in a resort town.  This is just all sorts of worrisome.  It's not surprising, but I think we need to get over the "What did Pakistan know and when did they know it?" and get on to: "What are they going to do about it?"  We've already had a Saudi member of Al Qaeda turn himself in to Saudi officials, presumably to avoid a "tap on the door" by JSOC.  I'd like to see Pakistan capture some of the Al Qaeda guys they are shielding and turn them over.  At this point what choice to they have?

At some level, I have to think the faction within the Pakistani security apparatus that sheltered bin Laden was playing a hedge against the US adventure in Afghanistan.  I am just as sure that same faction is sheltering and supplying the Taliban and other radical leaders and groups.  But that hedge is withering.

We have focused a lot of energy on Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.  I don't pretend to know the answer.  But if Pakistan can act like such assholes because they have nuclear weapons, what will Iran be like?

Will Pakistan change course?  Can it?