In the last hour or so, it has been reported that the Yemeni government has completed another strike on suspected Al Qaeda strongholds in Yemen, which as we now know is where the would-be underwear bomber is said to have been radicalized and equipped.
Yemeni forces raided an al-Qaida hideout and set off a gunbattle Wednesday as the government vowed to eliminate the group that claimed it was behind the Christmas bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner...."The (Interior) Ministry will continue tracking down al-Qaida terrorists and will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated," Deputy Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Saleh al-Zawari told senior military officials at a meeting in Mareb, another province believed to shelter al-Qaida fighters."
This is part of what has become an ongoing pattern of Yemen-led strikes with US support. The Yemeni authorities arrested a man suspected of conspiring with Al Qaeda, injured one al Qaeda militant and were pursuing a number of others.
The U.S. has increasingly provided intelligence, surveillance and training to Yemeni forces during the past year, and has provided some firepower, according to a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject.
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Yemen received $67 million in training and support under the Pentagon's counterterrorism program last year, second only to some $112 million spent in Pakistan.
He said the program was not a new one... "We are going to work with allies and partners to seek out terrorist activity, al-Qaida, wherever they operate, plan their operations, seek safe harbor," he said. "This is an effort that is years old now."
So this Bush-era policy seems to be continuing under the Obama administration. The focus is on:
a) Eliminating Al Qaeda
b) Using the local authorities
Compare this to an ongoing war with a country that was never proved to have links to Al Qaeda, or the capacity to make nuclear weapons, which were the premise under which this country was led into war by the previous administration (and which apart from costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, has taken our attention from where the real danger of terrorism lies). And as more than one person has pointed out today, the worst terror attack on American soil happened on the watch of the former president and his bombastic, enlistment-deferring vice-president.
So rather than grandstanding and blustering, the president has continued to do as he promised - root out Al Qaeda where it lives and to disrupt, destabilize and destroy it.
So every time Dick Cheney and the obstructionist, lying, fear-mongering, war-mongering members of the Republican party want to spout off, I will continue to politely ask them to STFU.
And now the White House is also settng the record straight....
First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: For seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq — a country that had no Al Qaeda presence before our invasion — Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe havens that have grown over a period of years. It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq and actually focusing our resources on the war against Al Qaeda — more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan and building partnerships to target Al Qaeda’s safe havens in Yemen and Somalia. And in less than one year, we have already seen many Al Qaeda leaders taken out, our alliances strengthened and the pressure on al Qaeda increased worldwide.
To put it simply: This President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from Al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.
... the president has made clear, we are at war with Al Qaeda, which attacked us on Sept. 11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda. These are the terrorists we will destroy; these are the extremists we will defeat." At West Point, the President told the nation why it was "in our vital national interest" to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, adding that, as commander in chief, "I see firsthand the terrible wages of war." And at Oslo, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the president said, "We are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land."
There are numerous other such public statements that explicitly state we are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and — unlike the last Administration — we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: Al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.