Before the ink could dry, it seemed like the secret war had already begun. Just a couple of toner cartridges haplessly headed for American synagogues, and suddenly the headlines are shouting it: TIME TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT YEMEN and OUR INVOLVEMENT IS GOING TO HAVE TO BE LONG-TERM. I suppose that's what it's come to in this country these days — that, as soon as an obscure Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen claims responsibility for some UPS packages in Chicago, Americans assume we have another all-encompassing, mega-expensive affair on our not-so-bloody hands. Because when it comes to nation-building, the United States doesn't do anything small and beautiful anymore.
But with word coming from inside the Obama administration this week that an organized cluster of intelligence operatives from the CIA and elsewhere were "working fast to address... a window of vulnerability," well, that's got to get you thinking: With Afghanistan and the winding-down Iraq war keeping our forces at near full capacity, America's experiment in the world's most dangerous country is necessarily an experiment in light-footprint warfare, and it could prove to be our Whack-A-Mole strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda in the decades to come. As long as we don't bring the hammer down too hard.
Trouble is...
Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/american-al-qaeda-yemen-111810?src=rss
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