When smart people say stupid things
I just read this in the online edition of the Washington Post, to which obviously the copyright for this material belongs.
'Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University who has studied terrorism since the late 1960s, said it is difficult to determine what the recent arrests and discoveries in Pakistan say about al Qaeda's viability.
"We don't know if this is the last gasp of what's left being rounded up, or whether they are much more resilient than we thought," Crenshaw said. "What we're not seeing is a lot of evidence of new leadership." '
To which I can only reply: duhhh! I'm sorry, but that's all that those words merit. To have studied this stuff for 40 years and to come out with a statement like "What we're not seeing is a lot of evidence of new leadership," well... did we see a lot of evidence of leadership before the September 11 attacks? Did we know how resilient they were then?
In short, has anybody learned anything about terrorism, either by watching it occur or by studying it and trying to learn the ways of the terrorist networks and operatives, trying to foil their missions, trying to capture the perpetrators, trying to shut down their operations? It looks like the answer is no.
So at risk of being wrong, Martha, let me place a bet. In answer to your question, I'll wager a buck that this is ~not~ the last gasp of what's left, and that they are ~much~ more resilient than we thought. I don't have 40 years of experience studying this, but I see what I see.
'Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University who has studied terrorism since the late 1960s, said it is difficult to determine what the recent arrests and discoveries in Pakistan say about al Qaeda's viability.
"We don't know if this is the last gasp of what's left being rounded up, or whether they are much more resilient than we thought," Crenshaw said. "What we're not seeing is a lot of evidence of new leadership." '
To which I can only reply: duhhh! I'm sorry, but that's all that those words merit. To have studied this stuff for 40 years and to come out with a statement like "What we're not seeing is a lot of evidence of new leadership," well... did we see a lot of evidence of leadership before the September 11 attacks? Did we know how resilient they were then?
In short, has anybody learned anything about terrorism, either by watching it occur or by studying it and trying to learn the ways of the terrorist networks and operatives, trying to foil their missions, trying to capture the perpetrators, trying to shut down their operations? It looks like the answer is no.
So at risk of being wrong, Martha, let me place a bet. In answer to your question, I'll wager a buck that this is ~not~ the last gasp of what's left, and that they are ~much~ more resilient than we thought. I don't have 40 years of experience studying this, but I see what I see.
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