The New York Times published an exhaustive analysis of US President Barack Obama's counterterrorism strategy today.
But it buried the lead.
The lengthy piece is focused on Obama's use of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen (It doesn't mention Somalia, where strikes are also happening) that target suspected terrorist leaders, and the spinning moral compass he uses to make those decisions.
In total it paints a picture of a president who is strong, decisive, always weighing the rights and wrongs of his strategy, and taking personal responsibility for those decisions.
It isn't until the very end that the story tackles the other side, perhaps more important side, of any counterterrorism strategy — one of diplomacy and de-radicalization, an effort to create a world where Al Qaeda has no credible agenda on which to recruit and carry out attacks.
Here is the mention in the article of Obama's peaceful strategy, in its entirety, which it appears at the very end:
Indeed, Obama has been primarily concerned with "kill lists" and debating among his security team who is next. While he has had success taking out Al Qaeda leaders around the world, he has also killed civilians (the number of which is impossible to know). And with each Al Qaeda death, someone new is inevitably added to the list.
In the article, Obama's former chief of staff, William M. Daley, asks how much killing will be enough.
Obama's continued use of a military strategy seems to conflict with statements made by CIA Director Leon Panetta last year, when he said the defeat of Al Qaeda was within reach. At the time, he said the United States needed kill only 10 or 20 more Al Qaeda leaders before we could all move on with our lives.
Unfortunately, Al Qaeda has a way of replenishing its ranks with disturbing efficiency, which is why a counterterrorism strategy that includes diplomacy and deradicalization is so important.
GlobalPost's own reporting in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen, regions rarely visited by journalists — or any westerners for that matter — have found that average people living in these parts have grown angry with the United States in reaction to the persistent drones strikes. They said they were finding themselves increasingly sympathetic with the militant groups they once detested.
Residents in these lawless parts said they worried that their kids, who are often unable to go to school because of the danger (or because the schools have been destroyed in drones strikes), are increasingly susceptible to Al Qaeda's rhetoric.
Yemen might be the best example of how desperately a counterterrorism strategy beyond military strikes is needed to defeat Al Qaeda.
As the Arab Spring began sweeping the Middle East last year, Yemenis were some of the first to begin protesting. They wanted their longtime, and famously corrupt, leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, removed from office. But Saleh was an important ally for the United States in the war on terror, allowing the US military to freely conduct strikes in the country's south, where Al Qaeda is active.
Instead of supporting the removal of Saleh, as it did the removal of Mubarak or Gaddafi, the United States balked. In the end, an internationally-brokered deal for Saleh's removal, which had little popular support domestically, was made and his deputy took power. In the intervening months, Al Qaeda seized multiple cities in Yemen's south and is now perhaps stronger than ever in Yemen — all of this despite an increase in joint US-Yemeni air strikes.
Here might be the most important graph in the story, one that could have served as the lead:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/chatter/obama-counterterrorism-strategy-drones-new-york-times