There are several very good points contained in “Al-Qaeda Has a New Strategy,” but I’m not sure there’s anything really new about Al-Qaeda.
“But for all the talk, two key dots have yet to be connected: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attacker, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the trusted CIA informant turned assassin. Although a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student and a 36-year-old Jordanian physician would seem to have little in common, they both exemplify a new grand strategy that al-Qaeda has been successfully pursuing for at least a year.”
Hoffman goes on to list point by point what AQ is doing– all correct, in my opinion– but again, nothing new. If it’s “new,” then we haven’t been paying attention; that of course is a distinct and sobering possibility.
No, it’s a useful and timely reminder on the same old story: this war has been with us a long time, long before we recognized it as such, and it will be with us for a while longer. And we face a determined, ruthless and adaptive adversary. We need to be more so.
