The New Road

Rand study bashes 'war on terror'

A new study from the ultra-conservative Rand corporation says that the best way to fight Al Qaeda is with law enforcement:

A roughly equal number of terrorist groups die when their key leaders are arrested or killed. In the vast majority of instances, this is accomplished by local law enforcement, the study notes.

"In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument," said Jones, a terrorism expert and the report's lead author.

Wow, you don't say. I've been saying this since before the Iraq war. Hell, I was saying this during Afghanistan. The best way to kill Osama and break Al Qaeda would have been to go in there with a small team and do a decapitation strike. Instead we took months to prepare a military ground offensive while Osama slipped silently away (and is still on the loose).

Of course, I was slammed by my conservative critics at the time for not approving of the big military war approach. Which was supported by Fox News and the pundits who were fed talking points from Cheney. Cheney in turn was just picking sides in a government turf war between the DOD and the CIA. He couldn't have cared less about actually fighting terrorism. He just wanted to make sure that Rumsfeld was in on the action.

Ah, well. Hopefully once Obama gets in there he can take a lightweight fast-action approach to terrorism. That was effective during the Clinton administration. It will be effective once again during the Obama administration.