Fighting al-Qaida’s a bit like playing “Whack-a-mole” because if you knock one down, another pops up in its place.
Osama Bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri’s appeared on video Saturday morning calling Muslims to rise up against the United States over the anti-Muslim film “Innocence of Muslims” is case and point.
According to The Associated Press, al-Zawahiri praised the radicals who attacked the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt and those who sacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing
Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, on the anniversary of 9/11.
The al-Qaida leader called on his followers “to continue to counter the US-Crusader-Zionist attack on Islam and Muslims and urge other Muslims to follow suit.”
One can only wonder what al-Qaida will do next because videos from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have historically preceded attacks.
The number of times Vice President Joe Biden used the phrase “Osama bin Laden” during Thursday night’s debate would seem show how the Obama team underestimates the persistence of the al-Qaida threat. The administration seems to limit the al-Qaida threat to one man, which is an oversimplification.
Bin Laden’s dead but al-Qaida is very much alive and still capable of inflicting damage as the attack in Libya, and Zawahiri, who many counterterrorism analysts believe ran al-Qaida during bin Laden’s lifetime, is still very much alive.
President Obama will no doubt stress bin Laden’s killing in Tuesday’s foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney, but getting bin Laden was a bit like killing an ant while failing to exterminate the ant colony.
