Lacking a tangible homeland—other than, perhaps, scattered outposts in the wilds of Waziristan—Al-Qaeda has established itself as a virtual state that communicates with its “citizens” and cultivates an even larger audience through masterful use of the media, with heavy reliance on the Internet. For every conventional video performance by Bin-Laden that appears on Al-Jazeera and other major television outlets, there are hundreds of online videos that proselytize, recruit, and train the Al-Qaeda constituency.
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The Al-Qaeda media machine has grown steadily. Qaeda and its jihadist brethren use more than 4,000 web sites to encourage the faithful and threaten their enemies. The Al-Qaeda production company, As-Sahab, released 16 videos during 2005, 58 in 2006, and produced more than 90 in 2007. Like a Hollywood studio, As-Sahab has a carefully honed understanding of what will attract an audience and how to shape the Al-Qaeda message.

The Al-Qaeda Media Machine

Robert Kaplan:

All the debate about Colombian free trade has obscured something important: Colombia is far safer now than it was five years ago. In fact, if Iraq were reclaiming terrorist-controlled areas as effectively as Colombia is, even the most die-hard opponents of the Iraq War would admit error. Colombia is, after Iraq and Afghanistan, our third-biggest nation-building project, and it is by far our most successful.

Colombia demonstrates the value of the indirect approach in our overseas military deployments. Our military role there, started by Bill Clinton and continued by George W. Bush, has been significant: Army Special Forces have trained elite Colombian units, who have in turn engaged the narco-terrorists. When I first visited Colombia in early 2003, the border with Venezuela was a no-go zone. Now new businesses are opening, and the streets are crowded, even at night. Parts of the south and east are experiencing the same success. Indeed, by 2006 I could visit large swathes that were inaccessible before.

Colombia is what Iraq should eventually look like, in our best dreams. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has fought -- and is winning -- a counterinsurgency war even as he has liberalized the economy, strengthened institutions, and improved human rights. Nuri al Maliki and Hamid Karzai could learn from him. The failure of Congress to pass a free-trade pact indicates that the greatest threat to our power is our own domestic dysfunction. What should be the icing on the cake to a successful nation-building program has become an embarrassment.

A Colombian Vision for Iraq

The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) is about defending against relentless ideological enemies who are bent on destroying the American way of life. However, the methods employed by the members of the homeland security, intelligence, law enforcement, and military communities that are charged with protecting the United States must be carefully measured. American citizens’ individual civil liberties must be safeguarded from infringement against a backdrop of evolving intelligence requirements. This paper will examine several related questions. First, what laws, judicial rulings, executive orders, regulations, policies, and precedents govern U.S. intelligence gathering related to operations that could affect American citizens? Are governmental departments and agencies operating in compliance? Does our current legal framework permit the sort of intelligence collection, sharing, and dissemination needed? If not, how can the agencies charged with doing so continue collecting the domestic intelligence needed to meet homeland security requirements, without trampling on the very Constitution those of us in the military are sworn to defend? Thoughtful consideration of these issues is the key to a true “victory” in the GWOT, lest we sacrifice our way of life along the way.

Balancing the Pendulum of Freedom

The Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq has helped reduce violence. But the surge is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

The Price of the Surge - Steven Simon

The U.S. does not often look north to gauge its own security prospects. But over the past few months, Canada has been quietly embroiled in one of the most revealing political and international-security debates since the end of the cold war. It's a debate critical to the future of NATO. And its outcome may tell us a lot about the fate of the U.S.'s struggle against terrorism.

Keeping Canada in Afghanistan