Resurgent al Qaeda

I suspect that the story told in this article (it's an NYT story, so if you want the whole thing go there quickly, because after a couple of days you'll have to pay for it) will turn out to be one of the most significant developments in the current struggle with jihadist Islamists (I refuse to call it by the misnomer of "war," which weakens our ability to deal with it intelligently. As the story notes:

"American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been steadily building an operation hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal areas of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda."

This strikes me as but one of the inevitable negative results of choosing to confront a terrorist act by invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (as everybody knew; I researched public statements to attack Bush once a few years ago and discovered he had carefully not directly claimed a direct Saddam-9/11 connection, even when he was implying and inferring one as hard as he could).

Add this to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan (which bin Laden has undoubtedly assisted) and the fact that those U.S. forces that might be most effective against al Qaeda are tied down in Iraq, and you have the makings of a potential disaster.

And now that we've waited and pretended that bin Laden and his cohorts were effectively out of the fight, it will be tough to move effectively. Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf would no doubt prefer that al Qaeda disapper, but he's in a ticklish situation. There is considerable jihadist support -- including in the military and the government itself -- in Pakistan, and Musharraf has to battle the perception that he's a sellout American stooge. No Pakistani government has effectively controlled Waziristan, and if Musharraf tries too hard, or works too closely with the Yankees, he not only faces possible failure but possible overthrow of his government.

And Pakistan has nukes.