Liberal Talk Radio

A little Austin Powers reference there, for all you fans.

I regret mentioning this on the show last night, but it’s important to point out that Al Qaeda’s Nubmer 2 man in Iraq was killed this week.

Many people see Al Qaeda as a many-headed hydra, and so tend to discount the importance of nabbing a high-ranking guy. And there is some truth to that. The organization is, in many ways, morphing into more of an ideology and less of a top-down force. But we shouldn’t underestimate the influence that these top-down leaders have on the execution and planning of the organization. They are important dudes. Militant Islam has specific political goals that it wants to achieve (the eradication of the U.S. military and Western culture from the Middle East, for starters), and it uses terrorism as a means to those ends.

There will likely always be angry fanatics who want to strap a bomb to their chests, regardless of how many top-level Qaeda commanders we capture. And that’s something we’re going to have to deal with. But the efficiency in which those fanatics are recruited, armed, trained, and turned on U.S. targets has everything to do with Qaeda’s top leaders and their political goals.