I also wanted to respond to the idea that somehow we are making the same mistake in Afghanistan that the Soviets did. This is a real misreading of history. The Soviets killed at least 1.5 million Afghans and they turned a third of the population into refugees; some 6 million fled to Iran and Pakistan.
Our policies in Afghanistan are failing and require a complete rethink but no matter how many problems we have encountered there (and in Pakistan) it is not because we are repeating the same mistakes as the Soviets who imposed a brutal, totalitarian war on a population who, in the main, loathed them with a passionate intensity.
As a lawyer, I will adjudge this at best circumstantial evidence, but take your point.
No leaders of al Qaeda have been killed or captured in urban areas since 2004. Before that many were-Khalid Sheik Mohammed, al Shibh, Abu Zubayda, etc. Since then Al Qaeda leaders who have been killed or narrowly avoided being killed have been on the receiving end of Hellfire missiles in the tribal areas.
How can you be sure of this?
For what its worth none of the AQ leadership are in urban areas. That was a very costly mistake for them. Since 2004 they are all in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas [of Pakistan.]
In response to Greg's query to me: Briefly, I don't assume that Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri are hiding in urban areas (but, of course, I have no intelligence upon which to base this assumption). So your question underscores my point precisely: the military is not the lead counterterrorism agency in urban areas, where so many segments of the jihadist movement thrive. And that is why the pre-9/11 mindset is a canard.
In Stephanie's answer to the second prompt, she writes: "It is time to put the myth of the pre-9/11 mindset to rest" with which I think I mostly concur--save with some reservations about the level of attention both the Clinton and early Bush Administration paid to the growing al-Qaeda threat, but she then nonetheless writes: "For other segments, namely the vanguard in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the military has and will continue to play a leading role in containing and reducing the jihadist threat".
I was curious who the "vanguard" is? Are we speaking of UBL and Zawahiri? If so, why would the military necessarily be best positioned to deal with them? I suspect many of the most precious high-value targets (think [9-11 mastermind] Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was apprehended in Rawalpindi by the [Pakistani Intelligence Service], I believe with some CIA involvement) could well be hiding in major cities like Karachi or Peshawar (perhaps in even more fantastical disguises than Radovan Karadzic's!), rather than the badlands of South Waziristan. And even if there, wouldn't highly focused counter-intelligence efforts--backed up by discrete military action as/if necessary--be the best way to locate and capture these terrorists?
I agree with Matt that the notion that U.S. counterterrorism policy is largely under the purview of the military is a false one. It relates, I think, to the partisan charge that the Democrats possess a "pre-9/11 mindset" when it comes to counterterrorism. Throughout the past seven years, the military has been the public face of U.S. counterterrorism efforts (the consequences of which merit their own discussion thread). But behind the scenes the same-old, pre-9/11 intelligence and law enforcement efforts have been crucial to foiling plots at home and across the globe. The twenty-or-so jihadist plots that have been rolled up since 9/11 came as a result of time-honored police and intelligence work, the success of which was sometimes predicated upon strong international cooperation. It is time to put the myth of the pre-9/11 mindset to rest.