No longer a problem?  

We've heard a lot in the past couple of days about how the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed is a long-term blow to al Qaeda. Some have suggested that in the short term, the threat level will increase because terrorists isolated by Mohammed's absense will push up their operations. Maybe that's plausible, but the implication is that after a few probably failed attacks in the short term, we'll all be a lot safer.

This flies in the face of everything I understand about terrorism. Taking one individual out of the picture might delay or even prevent some current operations from taking place. But won't someone else step up and fill that role eventually? That's certainly the way it's worked in Israel; I don't know how many times I've read about this or that terrorist leader being captured - or, more often, assassinated - and yet the terrorism continues, even escalates. In fact, terrorist attacks seem to correlate directly with the amount of retributive action taken by the Israeli government. Do we have any reason to think al Qaeda will be different? Yet right now we're being told that in the long term, American interests are safer. I simply don't believe it.

By the way, I'm not trying to suggest that we mustn't defend ourselves from terrorists; obviously we have to do what we can to defend ourselves from imminent attacks. But maybe there are other kinds of actions we might take as well - non-military actions - that could help reduce the threat level. Ultimately, military action can't eliminate the terrorist threat - certainly not without turning the United States into a vast global empire. But in the long term, fostering democracy and reducing poverty in the world will take away the medium in which terrorism grows.

MORE: This terrifying statement of US policy makes a similar argument about a better connected world minimizing terrorist threats, but it comes to startlingly different conclusions about how we should bring that better connected world into being. Specifically, it correlates the presence of strong US military forces ("exported security") with prosperity in the developed world, and argues that we must therefore expand our military presence in the developing world ("the Gap"):

Until we begin the systematic, long-term export of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in the form of terrorism and other instabilities.