But this list goes all the way to 11
By Thoreau
The LA Times reports that in the past several months the US has killed at least 9 senior Al Qaeda leaders. One of them is explicitly identified as the #3 guy on the list, and the others are presumably numbers 4 through 11.
This would explain why David St. Hubbins has been reported singing at so many funerals in Pakistan these days.
It’s not like we’ve never heard this before. Two possibilities:
1) They’re lying to us. This is by far the most likely explanation. Whoever these guys are, they aren’t really senior Al Qaeda leaders. Some of them are misidentified people, others are probably tribal militants who are involved in some sort of local feud but aren’t actually actively involved in attacks against people outside their little turf war. The simple fact is that the region of the Afghan-Pakistani border has been the site of tribal warfare for at least several centuries, if not several millenia, and just because some tribal leader is on the same side as some guy who’s on the same side as some other guy who was buddies with somebody who gave refuge to actual Al Qaeda folks, that does not mean that we should get bogged down in their tribal wars and go after every single guy with any connection to anybody who was connected to somebody else. The Hatfield-McCoy demographic lost the most recent US election, thankfully.
It would be tempting to say that we have some sort of duty to defeat every unsavory tribal leader who treats the women of the tribe like shit, on the grounds that letting the oozing Taliban sore fester just bit us in the ass. However, the reality is that the world is fully of brutal tribal leaders, the vast majority of whom have not sponsored an attack like 9/11. We needn’t stay true to form and be buddies with them the way we’re buddies with so many dictators, but we needn’t lob missiles at all of them either. There must be some sort of intermediate relationship between “I looked into his eyes and saw he’s a good man” and lobbing missiles. An unending land war in Asia is not an appetizing prospect.
2) Maybe these guys really are Al Qaeda. If so, then Al Qaeda is an organization with approximately 500 middle managers (based on the number of #3 guys killed since 2001) and less than 50 field operatives (based on the number of attacks carried out on Western targets since 2001). Too few Indians Afghans and too many chiefs shahs. And I should note that 19 of those field operatives died in their most successful operation, making this a self-limiting problem.
One piece of evidence in favor of this theory is the strained relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the old-school Al Qaeda operation based in Afghanistan/Pakistan. AQI under Zarqawi was a very dangerous organization inflicting a lot of casualties on the US, Al Qaeda’s sworn enemy. I was worried that AQI might some day take its urban warfare experience and use that experience to conduct operations here. Despite that, AQI got a scolding letter from the #2 guy in Al Qaeda. I am less than shocked to hear that a top-heavy organization might have strained relations with a dynamic, successful, and active affiliate.
If the second explanation is correct, then instead of lobbing missiles at Al Qaeda we should leave them alone to hold their committee meetings. In fact, we might send a mole to slow them down even further, periodically moving to elect a new chair and always finding ways to spend donations on administration rather than operations. Looking around my campus, I see a few people who would be perfect for this assignment.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 22, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
One of them is explicitly identified as the #3 guy on the list,
No, they were all #3s. Every time we kill #3, they promote somebody else to #3.
The al Qaeda constitution lists exactly three constitutional officers: Mastermind, Vice-Mastermind, and Keeper of the GPS Beacon.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 22, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
You know, when I spent the last seven years saying “We shouldn’t invade/be invading/have invaded Iraq. We should be going after al Qaeda,” it wasn’t just something I said because I didn’t like the Iraq War.
If we’re blowing up al Qaeda captains, lieutenants, and master sergeants in addition to al Qaeda four-star generals…GOOD! This is what we should have been doing all along.
Comment by Adam Mentzer —
March 22, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
We dealt Al Qaeda decisive military defeat in the heart of the Arab world thanks to the Surge. That wouldn’t have happened had we left Saddam Hussein in his palaces and rape rooms.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 22, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
You might not have noticed, but al Qaeda has been decisively defeated.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 22, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
joe-
I agree that lower-level Al Qaeda guys need to be taken care of as well as the big guys. I just wonder how many of the guys we’re getting are actually part of an active organization.
Comment by Matt Schiavenza —
March 22, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
Wasn’t the issue with Zarqawi that he hated Shi’ites and killed them almost as indiscriminately as he did non-Muslims? My sense was that Al Qaeda objected to AQI fucking up their pan-Muslim caliphate vision.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 23, 2009 @ 12:08 am
The quality of intelligence is always going to be a wild card, Thoreau. On top of that, for us the citizens, is that we don’t have any way to know what the policymakers and warfighters know, or think they know, so we’re twice as blind.
I thought the issue with Zarqawi was the brutality of his tactics. Al Qaeda has long sponsored anti-Shiite attacks, in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I’m pretty sure Shiites get to be infidels, too.
Comment by josephdietrich —
March 23, 2009 @ 8:28 am
Part of the problem is the idea that al-Qaeda is a pyramid-style hierarchical organization, a la the US military. However, in the standard alternative used by groups like al-Qaeda, the cell organization, the leader of every cell can conceivably be a #3 guy. So right there we have a disconnect.
Assuming it’s #2, even if the group was hierarchically-formed, it’s not as if they publish org charts. Any designation of who a #3 guy is in the organization is simply a subjective call on the part of those making these press releases. The thought process probably goes “well, we think this guy’s really important, but not as important as we think this and this guy is, so we’ll say he’s a #3 (or 4, or whatever). It’s just an example of the tendency towards false precision that you see in reports of all kinds.
Comment by Barry —
March 23, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
“Any designation of who a #3 guy is in the organization is simply a subjective call on the part of those making these press releases.”
A true #3 would be rather important, though, not just a mid-level schmuck. So when a zillion #3’s are killed, one wonders.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 23, 2009 @ 9:08 pm
I get that there can be a bunch of guys with equal rank. Still, most organizations have a clear #1 and #2, and only a handful of equal-rank #3 guys. If every week they kill another #3 guy, it makes you wonder, as Barry says.
To put this in perspective, if we assume that a #3 guy corresponds (very crudely) to a 2 star general (being 2 ranks down from the highest rank), then Al Qaeda has had a few dozen 2-star generals in the past several years. How many 2-star generals are in the Marine Corps? I’m assuming that Al Qaeda is significantly smaller than the Marines.
Either they’re lying to us, or Al Qaeda is an organization full of guys who want to talk about jihad and martyrdom, but they don’t actually want to do it. They want to be managers while somebody else goes into the field and gets killed.
I’m hoping that most of those #3 guys are just bullshitters who would never actually go into the field and do anything. It would be nice to think that Al Qaeda is as paralyzed by top-heavy management as any US corporation.
Actually, wait, that would be a horrible scenario, because then we’d be obligated to give them billions in bailout money.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 23, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Credit for the last point in my comment goes to Avram:
http://www.highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/12/05/8974#comment-352525