Destroying al Qaeda Is Not an Option (Yet)
November 17th, 2009Via: Foreign Policy:
The world would be wise to keep al Qaeda alive, paradoxically enough, for security reasons. Like it or not, keeping a battered al Qaeda intact (if weak) is the world’s best hope of funneling Islamist fanatics into one social network — where they stand the best chance of being spotted, tracked, and contained. The alternative, destroying the terrorist group, would risk fragmenting al Qaeda into thousands of cells, and these will be much harder to follow and impossible to eradicate. It’s the counterterrorist’s dilemma, and the only real choice is the least unsavory: Al Qaeda must live.
Research Credit: Zenc
This reminds me of a game of Starcraft; the U.S. et. al. are the Terrans, and they’ve “won” the game, but to justify the continued existence of their base archipelago, they keep a Hive Cluster and few zerglings in the corner of the map to play around with.