The news that Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed raises important issues for the continuing war on al Qaeda. First, al Qaeda has lost a vital asset, one that will be difficult to replace. Awlaki was a smart and articulate spokesman for the organization, giving an American voice to its extremist views and using contemporary terms and examples in a way that appealed to far more ordinary people than previous outreaches to Americans by al Qaeda -- including those led by Adam Gadahn and "Rakan Ben Williams." It is unclear just how many people have been radicalized by his work -- we know about Nidal Hasan (the Fort Hood killer) and Abdulmutallab (the Detroit "underwear" bomber) -- but there may be many more. Second, Awlaki's position within al Qaeda shows the importance that the group places on "inciting jihad" and dawa -- that is, on pushing young Muslims to join the jihad while inculcating them into al Qaeda's radical version of Islam. Awlaki performed both of these functions within the group, without which it would be unable to recruit new fighters for its global insurgency. Awlaki might also have been an important liaison for al Qaeda with the large Yemeni Awlaq tribe; his family -- and his father in particular -- are leading members of this influential tribe.

It has also been reported that the United States carried out the strike that killed Awlaki. If this is true, there are a few potential implications. This would be the first time that an American-born citizen was targeted and killed by the United States as part of its war, which might raise some lasting constitutional issues. Just as important is the issue of efficacy. Awlaki will be difficult for al Qaeda to replace, but not impossible, and his death will not end the war. His targeting in fact raises once again the issue of the proper strategy for taking on our enemy. Every airstrike in this conflict is based on an underlying strategy of attrition -- the belief that the United States can kill its way out of this problem. If the United States faces a low-level terrorism issue, attrition might just work, but if we are involved in a global insurgency, attrition alone will not solve, and might in fact exacerbate, the challenges we face. Killing off leaders -- even important ones like Awlaki -- creates martyrs, promotes younger and less inhibited fighters, and acts as a recruitment and radicalization tool for the insurgency. In other words, the death of Awlaki stops one important voice in this fight, but will not halt the slow collapse of Yemen into al Qaeda's hands, nor its use as a base for further action by the group.

Reading through the various detailed accounts, and keeping in mind that we are still learning new things and unlearning things we thought we knew barely a day ago, I am struck by the following aspects of the affair:

• This clearly marks that we are in the post-Gates era. Obama stuck his toe in the Rubicon when he over-ruled his superstar secretary of defense to launch the Libya operation. He crossed over to the other side when he decided to do the SEAL strike rather than the bombing strike recommended by Gates. The baton of "most influential security voice" has passed from Gates to someone else, perhaps to his successor, Panetta, who ran the military operation.
• This was also clearly a post-Clinton choice. Obama took the riskier option, the one with a much higher potential downside, rather than the "safe" choice that would assuredly destroy the target with almost no chance of U.S. casualties or fiascos. During the Clinton era, that was how bin Laden was handled, with a risk-minimization strategy of stand-off strikes. Obama's reliance on drone strikes elsewhere echoes that earlier period, but with this SEAL attack he clearly chose the risk-acceptant option. If the operation had failed, Obama would have been indelibly marked as another Jimmy Carter. It may be an exaggeration, but not by much, to say that he bet his second term on the tactical proficiency of U.S. Special Forces.
• The president showed he could "walk and chew gum." Some early carping noted that the president played a half-round of golf and found time to rehearse his gag skit for the White House Correspondent's dinner on the margins of this operation. He did more than that: around the same time he was making this momentous decision, he also made the decision to end the nonsense about his birth certificate. Outsiders may complain about the incongruity, but insiders will recognize that this is the reality of the office. The president has to go from an emotionally draining meeting with a grieving widow to a photo-op with Girl Scouts to a meeting where he decides on a political strategy for selling his economic policies to a meeting where he decides whether to authorize a drone strike. Each meeting is the most important meeting of the day (or more) for everyone else in the room except the president. Sometimes the different lines bleed into each other -- did the president choose the bin Laden option that offered the best chance of avoiding a "deather" conspiracy theory because he was concurrently dealing with a "birther" conspiracy theory? Other times, the president must compartmentalize.
• The decision parameters played to an Obama strength and away from an Obama weakness. A reporter pointed this out to me: Obama could take his time in making this decision, which allowed him to set up the deliberate process he seems to favor. The administration has not done well when trying to respond to rapidly evolving events visible to everyone else -- witness the shaky response to the June 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, the 2011 Arab Spring, and the rapidly collapsing situation in Libya. On the bin Laden strike, Obama did not have unlimited time, but he did have more time and, importantly, more space away from public pressure, to weigh the decision before acting
• Still no sign of the vice-president. I realize I have belabored this point beyond what it probably merits, still it is striking that the tic-toc describes a debate between Obama and Gates, and the steely-eyed resolve of Panetta and Brennan, and merely the fingering of a rosary bead by the vice president. I asked a reporter who participated in an extensive backgrounder and was told that the vice president wasn't mentioned. What gives? 

The death of bin Laden is unambiguous good news for the world and the continuing war on terror: the murderer responsible for 9/11 and tens of thousands of other deaths around the world has gone to meet his Maker and receive justice for his evil. Just as importantly the chief architect of al Qaeda, a charismatic leader who may have held the group together through the sheer force of his personality, is gone.

Here are three of the implications of this momentous event:

First, there is good reason to hope that the coalition that constitutes much of the global jihad will begin to unravel as individual leaders of jihadist groups are able to reconsider their oath of fealty (called "ba'ya") to bin Laden. These oaths, which have been used by al Qaeda to create its global coalition from many disparate groups, are binding only until the death of the person one swears to (the Amir), and do not automatically transfer to the Amir's deputy. We can expect that at least some of those who supported bin Laden will decide not to transfer their loyalty to the new Amir of al Qaeda and might be open to surrendering or negotiations.

Second, the news that bin Laden was found in a lavish mansion just outside Islamabad -- in a suburb that is the richest of the entire country of Pakistan -- and guarded by dozens if not hundreds of minions, shows that Pakistan has been at least partially assimilated by the global jihadist movement. There is no way in God's green earth that some part of official Pakistan -- the military, the intelligence agencies, or the political class -- was not somehow involved in protecting bin Laden from detection and capture. Punishing Pakistan is not the point, but rather that the country is much further along in its slide toward extremism and perhaps even civil war and needs more, not less, assistance from us.

Finally, it has been the modus operandi of the jihadist groups affiliated with al Qaeda to carry out revenge attacks after the death of leaders. Bin Laden has said since the 1990s that his group and movement are more than one person, and there are signs that he and his organization have long planned for his death or capture. Part of this planning is almost certainly raids and terrorist attacks carried out in his name, and we should be extra vigilant over the next few months for these new threats.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is the culmination of years of hard work by military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic professionals -- thousands upon thousands of hours of arduous physical and mental labor. It is not their only achievement, of course, but in symbolic terms, it is surely one of the most satisfying.

This is also the signal national security achievement of the Obama Administration and they are taking a well-earned victory lap. The Administration is to be commended for many things -- and as we learn more about the mission, we may learn yet additional ways the team performed well -- but two things in particular struck me as praiseworthy: first, the Administration managed to keep this operation secret despite months of lead time and internal deliberations; and second, the decision to bury bin Laden at sea (assuming that they have otherwise secured indisputable evidence that they got the right man) deftly dealt with the problem of a martyrdom shrine. The President may have struck a few discordant notes in his remarks, but this is not the time for cavils. This is a time to honor the efforts of everyone involved, from the nitty-gritty tactical trigger-puller to the President himself.

Yet, as President Obama rightly emphasized, killing bin Laden does not mean that the war against terrorists inspired by militant Islamism to wage war against the United States and our allies is over.

Indeed, in some ways the details of this operation remind us that we still face daunting challenges. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the entire affair is the news that bin Laden was not hiding out in a cave in the remote parts of ungoverned areas but in an affluent Pakistani neighborhood close to an Army base. This fact raises inevitable questions about the degree to which some Pakistani authorities might have helped bin Laden to elude us, whether by acts of omission or commission. From the earliest hours after the 9/11 attacks, it was recognized that a transnational terrorist network would be far more lethal if it could leverage state sponsorship. A few men in a cave is not as dangerous as a few men in a cave with access to select resources of a state.

A deeper challenge can be found closer to home. President Obama will enjoy a much-needed boost in public and bipartisan confidence. But the aspects that unite the country -- the success of this tactical mission -- will soon enough give way to the aspects that do not. What does this mean for the larger war against the Taliban in Afghanistan? Will Americans, understandably tired of the costs of a lengthy war, rush to declare victory and demand a premature end to operations there and elsewhere?

In an eerie coincidence, I was watching the movie Charlie Wilson's War as news of the operation against bin Laden filtered out. That movie celebrates another significant American achievement -- the covert operation to assist the mujahideen in defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's. The script deftly pairs the celebration of this achievement with the reminder that the United States failed to follow through with the implications of success and within a few short years was confronting a new menace we barely understood.

We have just killed the most significant leader of that menace, and we should honor that achievement. But we should not pretend that there is no more work to be done. President Obama and his team understand that. Will they be able to persuade the American people and our partners around the world to understand that?

Signals from the White House indicate that President Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address tomorrow night will focus heavily on domestic and economic policy. Understandably so, as domestic and economic issues spurred the GOP's massive Congressional gains, and remain the nation's predominant concerns. The SOTU is President Obama's best platform to regain the political initiative and point the country towards his preferred course over the next two years.

Yet the president should not neglect national security policy in the SOTU, for two reasons. First, while the American people are his primary audience, we are not his only audience. Foreign leaders -- friends, foes, and fence-sitters alike -- will be watching keenly for signs from Obama about strategic priorities and U.S. resolve. Second, while domestic and economic policy has thus far defined this presidency, the future by its nature will surprise, and national security could reemerge as a defining concern.

Here are three issues President Obama should address tomorrow night:

Afghanistan. The administration continues to send conflicting and conflicted signals about the Afghanistan war and the meaning of July 2011 as a "drawdown" date. As Peter Feaver has argued, the White House's rhetorical neglect of Afghanistan threatens to erode tenuous public support. Meanwhile, key actors -- ranging from our NATO allies, India, and the Afghan people and government to Pakistan and the Taliban -- all remain uncertain about the United States' commitment to success in the Afghan mission. And all will in their own ways hedge accordingly. The Congressional audience tomorrow night will be essential for supporting and continuing to fund the war effort -- and needs to know it is a priority for the president. Most important, U.S. forces currently deployed in theater need to hear from their commander-in-chief that he is resolved to see their efforts through.

Read on

The 9/11 anniversary is a traditional time for taking stock of the war on terror, and the conventional wisdom has issued its verdict: the United States "over-reacted." The evidence the pundits offer includes the following: (a) the United States spent a great deal of money; (b) thousands of U.S. soldiers lost their lives; (c) the anti-terror bureaucracy is much larger than it was before; (d) policy favored the national security end of the long-standing continuum running from unfettered civil-liberties to absolute national security; and (e) al Qaeda has not launched another successful 9/11 sized attack on U.S. soil. Indeed, Osama Bin Laden is on the run and has become a marginalized figure.

The conventional wisdom would be more persuasive if the pundits engaged systematically and critically with the hypothesis that (a) plus (b) plus (c) plus (d) contributed to (e). As far as I can tell, they simply ignore that possibility.

However, the conventional wisdom does get one thing right: With a national security challenge of the magnitude posed by the 9/11 attacks, it is likely that U.S. strategists got some things wrong (and some things right... that part seems to have eluded the pundits). Strategy has an unavoidable trial-and-error element to it, and anniversaries are good moments for stock-taking.

I won't pretend to offer a complete list, but here are two I would flag in each column.

Two things we got wrong in the weeks immediately following 9/11:

• Mismatching goals and capabilities of U.S. ground forces. The Bush administration entered office with a clear national security vision of transforming the military. There were a number of elements to this: redressing a decade of drift on weapons procurement and readiness; investing in generation-skipping technologies to extend America's military advantage into the out-years; reforming wasteful Pentagon practices; creating a more agile and lethal force; and downsizing the extremely expensive ground forces (expensive not only because of up-front operational costs but even more because of downstream personnel costs). This transformation agenda was premised on the notion that we were in a period of strategic pause -- we would not need to deploy the military in combat in the near future, certainly not for a lengthy ground combat operation, so we could afford to take some near-term risk to invest in long-term improvements. After 9/11, that premise was less plausible, though the Afghanistan operation arguably was sustainable under the old assumptions. Iraq clearly was not. The error was a strategy gap combining a decision to confront Iraq with a decision not to expand the size of the ground forces. By the time the administration had closed this gap in 2007, the strains to the All-Volunteer Force were acute.
• Missing the opportunity to "nationalize the burden" through some sort of broad-based measure like a gas tax. I understand why the administration was leery about raising taxes. They had inherited an economy heading into a recession and the psychological shock of the 9/11 attacks threatened to impose severe economic pain out of proportion to the actual physical damage of the attacks. The president's call for the public to resume normal economic activity was sound (but could have been worded more carefully so as to avoid the tendentious parodies that followed it). A gas tax would have had some economic downsides, but in retrospect probably not as great as was feared at the time. It would also, however, have brought some symbolic upsides, making clear that every American was paying for the security we valued. Ever since, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have struggled against the perception that the burdens of the war are disproportionately born by a few Americans. Some of this is inevitable with an All-Volunteer Army. But the failure to find a persuasive rebuttal to that perception has been unfortunate and, in retrospect, avoidable.

Two things we got right in the weeks immediately following 9/11:

• Recognition that confronting Bin Laden would require all elements of national power. The Bush administration arrived in office believing that the Clinton approach to terrorism in general and to Bin Laden in particular was unstrategic and artificially truncated. But they were slow to act on this insight until the 9/11 attacks. After that, they showed extraordinary resourcefulness in tapping all of government, not just law enforcement and the military. The conventional critique from "anti-militarists" that the Bush administration only used military power is self-evidently wrong. Instead, there were remarkable innovations in law enforcement techniques, intelligence operations, diplomatic initiatives, and soft-power campaigns. Not all of these new measures proved effective, but it seems clear that none of them would have worked at all if they were complemented only with a few salvos of stand-off airstrikes -- the only military tool Bin Laden saw the United States use against him since he launched his war in the 1990s. The decision to utilize a robust military effort with other instruments of statecraft put al Qaeda on the run and, pace the conventional wisdom pundits, is probably why al Qaeda poses less of a threat today than it did when we confronted them in the aftermath of 9/11.
• Determination to confront the ideological roots of al Qaeda terrorism without falling into a religious war. The events of the past month stand in sharp contrast to the months immediately following the 9/11 attacks. It is ironic that our society has had a tougher time dealing with the religious issue almost a decade later than we had dealing with it when the passions and wounds were so fresh. The handling of this issue by the Bush administration looks rather deft in retrospect and in comparison with recent events. And, of course, the American people deserve enormous credit. Critics say that Americans should be held to a higher standard than other societies, where persecution of  religious minorities is rife and where attempts to stir up religious violence are often successful. We met that higher standard after 9/11 and political leaders on both sides of the aisle deserve some credit.  

In sum, the record is mixed, but hardly as negative as the conventional wisdom paints.  

Al Qaeda has returned to the front pages with a deadly attack by an affiliate (al-Shabab) in Uganda that killed over seventy people, and the arrest on July 8 of a jihadist cell in Norway connected to al Qaeda. I'll write more later about the Uganda attacks, but the arrests are also important, and provide a significant glimpse into where we are at in the Long War.

The Norwegian plot aimed to attack that country's parliament, and consisted of at least three individuals who had been under surveillance for a year. This was apparently just the tip of a big iceberg, however, since the arrests were almost immediately connected to two other jihadist plots, in Britain and the United States, by law enforcement officials. The British jihadist group had been arrested first, in April 2009, and had allegedly been within days of carrying out a suicide bombing of shopping centers in Manchester. The U.S. plot was led by Najibullah Zazi, who pled guilty early this year to planning to bomb the New York City subway system in the fall of 2009. Government officials in all three countries tied the planned attacks to al Qaeda's central leadership, and not to the affiliates that have recently attempted attacks in the Untied States (such as the would-be Christmas day bomber).

Read on

I've had a bracing welcome to the blogosphere and see that there are some folks who disagree with me on the relationship between Mullah Umar, Bin Ladin, and the TTP. Of course issues like relationships are always open to interpretation and intelligence analysts with access to the full range of available sources debate this question on a daily basis. It's also a fact that the situation on the ground is fluid, and the insurgency in Pakistan-Afghanistan is continuously evolving. What is true today about relationships between groups might not be true next year.

But here's why I said that -- at least today -- the TTP are "under the authority" of both Mullah Umar and Bin Ladin: leaders of the TTP have publicly said that this is true. On March 1, Hakimullah, the head of the TTP posted a video on the Jamia Hafsa website in which he clarified the relationship between the TTP and Mullah Umar, saying among other things that "the Afghan Taliban are doing jihad under the leadership of Mullah Umar, and the mujahidin of the Tehrik-e-Taliban [TTP] are also doing jihad under his leadership. The commander of the faithful [i.e. Mullah Umar] is the leader of the Afghan Taliban as well as the Pakistani Taliban."

As for the relationship between the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qa'ida, this is how Mullah Nazir, a local commander in the TTP, put it last year in an interview with al-Qa'ida's media wing, al-Sahab. First, he confirmed their allegiance to the global jihad:

Our Jihad isn't limited to Pakistan or Afghanistan. We do not even accept these boundaries that separate us, that 'this shall be Pakistan' and 'that shall be Afghanistan...' this is nothing but an inanity devised by the Jews and we reject it...' Our Jihad is a global Jihad, and we aim to liberate Muslims throughout the world and obliterate tumult, oppression and mischief, and establish the system of Shariah all over the world.

He then affirmed their commitment to both Mullah Umar and Bin Ladin as commanders of the jihad:

Al-Sahab: What are your sentiments regarding the leadership of the Mujahidin i.e. Mullah Muhammad Umar, Commander of the Believers, and Shaykh Usama bin Ladin?

Mullah Nazir: We want to say to them that we are your Mujahidin and your soldiers. We await your orders. Do not worry, for the Mujahidin here in Waziristan alone suffice you. We are proud of your leadership and consider it an honor for us. We give away our lives at your command and feel proud to obey you at all times.

Of course, whether Bin Ladin actually gives the TTP orders and they actually obey him is another question.

By Peter Feaver

Of all the reporting, commentary, and bombast on the Christmas Day terrorist incident that I have read in recent weeks, I have to think that the stream that is getting the most attention in the White House is trickling out of perhaps the least-likely place: reliably pro-Obama Newsweek. In recent days, Newsweek has posted two well-reported stories that provide an ominous answer to the perennial question: who knew what and when did they know it?  

The first story had the alarming headline: "Exclusive: Obama Got Pre-Christmas Intelligence Briefing About Terror Threats to 'Homeland.'" Even partisan defenders of Obama could not help but notice the similarities to the warning President Bush received in August 2001 about al Qaeda's desire to strike U.S. targets. To be sure, if the Newsweek article is accurate, the warning President Obama received was maddeningly vague, certainly not specific enough to pinpoint the abortive underwear bombing. For that matter, the warning President Bush received was also not precise enough to pinpoint the 9/11 attacks, which is why the intelligence community was primarily focused on possible attacks on U.S. targets overseas (as in the Fall 2000 bombing of the USS Cole). But the August 2001 PDB was hard to explain, and put the Bush administration on the defensive when it was released. The December 2009 warning may similarly wrong-foot the Obama Administration, especially if it is the tip of an iceberg.

Which brings us to the second story, a report that White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan was briefed on the method allegedly used by the Nigerian would-be terrorist: the infamous underwear bomb.  Again, this has echoes to the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and raises just the sort of questions that are awkward for any White House to answer: Who received this briefing? What did they do with that information? Why didn't you do more? What other warnings have you received? And so on.

If the rough treatment Brennan received on the Sunday shows is any indication (see, for instance, Brennan dance through the questions here), the media does not seem inclined to give the Obama administration a pass on this story.

Indeed, my hunch is that there will be more such leaks in the coming days. I base this hunch on no inside information beyond this: the knowledge that ever since 9/11 the warning stream coming out of the intelligence community has been much, much larger than most people realize. There are bound to be many vague warnings that now, with hindsight, seem more portentous than they seemed at the time. Just as assuredly, there were many vague warnings that now, with hindsight, proved to be mere noise. But it is the first set of warnings that reporters are so adept at wresting from the system, especially if they can be traced to the White House.

I will be following the Newsweek thread more closely in the coming days and I would bet that the Obama White House is, too.

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Feaver

Our ongoing war with terrorists inspired by a militant
islamist ideology is the story of the decade.  They were at war with us as
the decade opened (and arguably for much of the previous decade), but the United States was not really at war with them until after the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration's response was a dramatic escalation from the approach that had characterized U.S. efforts in the previous decade: pin-prick retaliatory strikes and a law-enforcement-first approach to taking down the network.  Instead, the Bush administration expanded the toolbox in an effort to use all elements of national power -- military, economic, diplomatic, law enforcement, and intelligence, as well as myriad soft-power assets like a counter-narrative to address the appeal of militant Islam.  The decade's closing with al Qaeda's near-successful Christmas Day attack on yet another U.S. airplane, dramatizes that the war continues. As with previous long wars like the Cold War, our success depends in part on the ability of each new administration to sustain the effort. The story of the next decade may well turn on whether the Obama administration can build on what worked and learn from what did not.  

William Inboden

The 9/11 attacks -- and the fact that they only happened once. The defining impact of September 11th needs little elaboration. But perhaps as noteworthy is that, against all fears and expectations at the time, the United States has not (yet) been hit again with a large scale terrorist attack. President Bush deserves much credit for this, which in time should be judged by history as one of his most significant accomplishments. Last week’s attempted airline bombing on Christmas day is only the latest sobering reminder that the threat is persistent and real. Here is hoping that by the end of President Obama’s tenure in office, preventing another attack will stand as one of his signature achievements as well.  

Phil Levy:

The emergence of non-state actors, particularly through terrorism. The decade opened, of course, with the 9/11 attacks. Many of the most challenging foreign policy problems since have revolved around the unconventional nature of this conflict. Who is a prisoner of war when the other side doesn't wear uniforms? Who is responsible when terrorist leaders hide out in the mountains? What counts as victory, or does this go on indefinitely? As much as I would have liked to argue for an economic story, this did more to reshape the global scene. 

Thomas Mahnken:

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. There is simply no way to understand the evolution of American national security policy over the past decade outside the context of the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda’s strike on the United States, launched on a clear, cool Tuesday morning, fundamentally redefined American national security policy and is transforming the U.S. military.  The struggle against violent Islamist extremism defined the presidency of George W. Bush, but did not end with the inauguration of Barack Obama. Indeed, as the Obama administration has hopefully discovered in its awkward handling of the Christmas airline bombing plot, Islamist terrorism cannot be ignored or wished away.

Dov Zakheim

The surge that worked. Many analysts, myself included, doubted that whatever Dave Petraeus might do would not be enough to prevent the Iraqi civil war from continuing to wreck that country. Capitalizing on, and stoking, the Sunni revival, working with tribes, arguing for the surge and then reorienting his forces to a counterinsurgency posture, Petraeus turned the tide of the Iraq War, and saved the United States from an ignominious withdrawal.

By Peter Feaver

It is not every day that one gets a chance to rattle the cage of the boss, so when I read the contribution from ForeignPolicy.com czarina Susan Glasser to the Washington Post's compilation of "worst ideas of the decade" I knew I had to respond -- even if it means I can kiss my year-end bonus good-bye.

Glasser's argument is the conventional wisdom, painstakingly assembled over years of partisan arm-chair generalship: if only the United States had deployed more ground troops into Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, we may have killed or captured the al Qaeda leadership at Tora Bora. Grumbling about the Tora Bora mission could be heard within hours of the battle, but got much louder during the 2004 campaign when Senator Kerry made it a standard attack line. The failure to tamp down violence in Iraq after the fall of Saddam served to further fan the flames of this critique -- too-light-a-footprint caused us troubles in Iraq and that "proves" we had too light a footprint in Afghanistan. This fall, the critique got revived when Senator Kerry's committee published a report which purports to validate the argument.  

My problem with the Tora Bora critique -- both its generalized form and the particular form advanced by Glasser -- is that it conveniently forgets that the reason bin Laden was "trapped" in Tora Bora in the first place is that Secretary Rumsfeld and General Franks and CIA Director George Tenet defied both the conventional war plans and the conventional wisdom to mount the very light-footprint campaign that Glasser et al. are complaining about. If Rumsfeld and Franks and Tenet had used the conventional warplan that involved a heavy U.S. ground presence  instead of the rapidly deployable light-footprint that Glasser denounces, the invasion of Afghanistan would have happened some time in 2002, if then.  If Rumsfeld and Franks and Tenet had listened to the conventional wisdom during the early weeks when the light-footprint approach appeared to be faltering, they would have abandoned the Afghan effort long before the battle in Tora Bora.  

The Rumsfeld/Franks/Tenet approach was an innovative gamble that performed much better than anyone, especially bin Laden, expected. For this reason, and for this reason alone, there was a chance to capture/kill bin Laden at Tora Bora.

Pushed to its logical conclusion, the Tora Bora critique reduces to the claim made by Monday morning quarterbacks everywhere. The Tora Bora critics assure us in hindsight that they would have approved every pass that was successful and all the aspects of the game plan that worked, but they also would have known not to throw the pass that got blocked and they would have changed the game plan at exactly the right moment.  

It is unfortunate that bin Laden escaped. It may even be the case that redeploying the U.S. Rangers that were on the ground in a different fashion might have produced a different result. And I am certainly not going to defend every decision made by Rumsfeld or every scintilla of spin advanced by the Pentagon press shop. But before I am going to take seriously the conspiracy theory that we "allowed Osama to escape" just to prove a light-footprint theory of warfare, I want to hear the critics acknowledge that we had bin Laden within reach at Tora Bora precisely because we were willing to try the very light-footprint approach they denounce.

Sunday was another tragic day in Iraq, more than 150 people were killed and another 500 injured in attacks on the Ministries of Justice and Interior in Baghdad. The devastation was another sad reminder of how fragile are the gains bought so dearly by Iraqis and Americans -- military and civilian -- working every day in that country to consolidate progress toward a secure and representative Iraq.

Those who believe Iraq was "the wrong war," or that violence and authoritarianism are endemic in a country with such deep sectarian divisions, or those who practice the soft bigotry of low expectations (as President Bush so nicely phrased it in a different context), and believe Muslims incapable of democracy will likely see these attacks as justification for accelerating our disengagement from Iraq. Such a conclusion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the domestic politics of Iraq in the run up to their January provincial elections.

War is the extension of politics by other means, as Clausewitz teaches, and domestic politics is what these attacks were about. Iraqi security forces are struggling to prevent such attacks. Prime Minister Maliki's confidence in their ability has always run ahead of their actual performance (as early as 2005 he advocated a security hand over) and he has been party to politicizing their ranks. 

But Maliki is running on a platform of providing security and negotiating the U.S. withdrawal. Anything that calls security into question or precipitates a return by American military forces into Iraq's cities (from which we had withdrawn on June 30 in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement) hurts Maliki's claim. And it doesn't just hurt Maliki, it hurts other incumbent politicians, like the Mayor of Baghdad, who also argued for removing blast walls to facilitate movement and commerce and a return to normalcy in the capital.

After the last spectacular attack, against the Foreign Ministry on Aug. 19, Prime Minister Maliki responded in a stridently partisan fashion, blaming Sunni and al Qaeda as one, conducting arrests and crackdowns that have a suspicious political tilt against his political opponents. While the U.S. military spokesman tried to put a good face on the Iraqi government's reaction, comparing it to the crasser political manipulation of the Aug. 19 bombings, Maliki's statement in the aftermath speaks for itself:

The cowardly acts of terrorism which occurred today must not weaken the resolution of Iraqis to continue their journey and to fight the followers of the fallen regime, the Baathists and al-Qaeda."

This, before the government had any reasonable idea of who conducted the attacks. There are numerous political factions that could benefit from delegitimizing the Maliki government's record, not least rival Shi'ia who excluded him from being their standard bearer in the election.

But the good news is that political pluralism has taken root in Iraqi politics. Maliki couldn't win the support of a Shi'ia-only slate organizing for the January elections, so he opted to build a cross-sectarian slate. He's not trying very hard, mind you, as his statement blaming Sunni for Sunday's bombing shows. But his effort to appeal across sectarian lines was his Hail Mary (so to speak) and shows he believed voters would reward the choice. Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, a Sunni, is likewise tacking beyond sectarianism to broaden his prospective political base. 

This is a hugely important development, seldom seen in fragile societies. Usually, as with the Balkan elections of the early 1990s, politicians prey on voters' mistrust and trend toward extremes which is why elections in factional societies are so often polarizing and foster an upward spiral of violence.

In the last provincial elections, nearly all incumbents were voted out of office, a strong signal that average Iraqis believed they weren't doing their jobs. And voters weren't just "simplifying the map," moving to the sectarian extreme out of fear: Shi'ia voted out Shi'ia, Sunni voted out Sunni, Kurd voted out Kurd. What Iraqi political elites took from that election is the fundamental commandment of democracy everywhere: Thou Shalt Respect the Voters.

Talking to Iraqi politicians (as I did the past couple of weeks around their country), what is most striking is the extent to which they sound like small-city politicians in our own country. They worry about power outages and sewer systems and the quality of education for youngsters. They're mad at the central government for not funding activity they consider its responsibility. They rail against corruption -- even as many of them practice it -- and fear exposure by the free media that is burgeoning. Accountability has come to Iraqi politics, and the politicians know it.

A representative government is struggling to emerge in Iraq. It may not succeed in bridging the sectarian tensions, corruption, and long shadow of decades of authoritarianism that inhibits initiative. In Iraq, strong cultural undercurrents cut against the kinds of behavior that make successful democracies successful. But Iraqis want it, and political elites are responding. This is good news for Iraq and for the advancement of our values in the world.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images