I got this post on the strategic logic of suicide terrorism from Dan Drezner.

What an interesting and scary article. It is the first fresh perspective I've read about the war on terrorism in awhile. This has already go me rethinking my position on the Iraq war...

Well, this combined with the two recent attacks on Musharraf. These attacks have gotten some coverage, but not nearly enough...these attacks are VERY scary for a couple of reasons. One, they bear the seal of Al Queda. On 9/9/2001, two days before the World Trade Center, Al Queda assassins killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, a Northern Alliance commander in Afghanistan. This was a wise move because Massoud, a well respected and competant military leader, was going to ally himself with the US fight in Afghanistan. Who knows what his presense would have meant for this post-war period in Afghanistan?

With the orange alert and Air France cancellations, it is clear Al Queda was planning a big move - hit a big Western target and get rid of Musarraf at the same time, a strategy they have used before. The implications are scary. Hitting the West would veer our eyes in that direction, toward the small town in Virginia, or Vatican City, or LAX, or Las Vegas, wherever they were trying to go. In the meantime, getting rid of Musarraf throws nuclear armed Pakistan into chaos. Problematic? Hugely. Pakistan might be the scariest country in the world right now, beyond Iran and North Korea. They seriously hate the US, fundamentalists control much of the military and the nuclear program. And it is clear to everyone that if there were a popular election in Pakistan, the fundamentalists would win. Currently, they appear to be reluctantly helping us in the war on terror. But what if Musarraf was gone and a new administration more friendly to Al Queda were to take it's place? We would be steps back in the war on Al Queda and have a potential nuclear enemy on our hands.

And what does this have to do with the War in Iraq? Very little, because while Bush focused on the long term with rebuilding the middle east, Al Queda refocused on the short term, and trying to establish a new base and new source of weapons. I guess the good thing is that the assassination attempts failed and we seem to have averted some XMas terrorist attacks.

The bad thing is that Al Queda was close and we know they will try again. Fuck, who knows if we're winning or losing?