Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
That's what I'm trying to dissect wm...did the benefit of putting a face on terrorism really bear any fruit, relative to a credibility loss? Did the balance of the scale favor us, and then shift as Afghanistan lingered, or was the balance always favoring the extremist

I know folks are somewhat inclined to say that we shouldn't cry over spilt milk, but put our shoulder squarely into the business of finishing what we started. I read/hear that over and over again, but I believe we need to look at these "moot points" in order to make more informed decisions in the future. This is just one of those points that intrigues me.

Don't get me wrong, I am all about making sure we have our share of boogeymen to use as a target reference points. I just think we need to be very judicious when we decide to set priority targets, cancel them, and roll to a new one.
I'm not sure that we can cancel the priority targets that simply. Even the FBI tends to leave folks on their 10 most wanted list for a long time, despite putting their priorities/sights on other bad guys.

I think we might need to look for other targets to take out, but we probably need to do so very quietly.

As others have pointed out, putting a face on a bad guy in an asymmetric war provides a rallying point for the folks on the short end of that assymmetry to rally around--I think that is the ultimate point I would derive from my reading of 1984--real or not, a rebel name provides a point arond which nascent rebels can rally. Since there will probably always be rebels, it may be a good thing to give them a focus that makes it easier for the powers that be to locate and target. In other words, keeping OBL around may be a good thing because at least we have an idea where the threat comes from -- he and AQ will draw the bulk of the malcontents who desire to disrupt the status quo. At least that is the point I get from Orwell (as well as the other anti-Utopian writers I've read, like Aldous Huxley in Brave New World).