Somehow, The Onion always manages to co-opt reality before it actually happens:
The Americans had a $200,000 bounty on his head. He tried to assassinate Vice President Cheney last year in Afghanistan, say US officials. But one of Al Qaeda’s most senior commanders in Afghanistan, Abu Laith al-Libi, appears to be dead. He was killed in a US missile strike in a remote part of Pakistan this week, according to a radical Islamist website.
Mr. Libi was the liaison between the terrorist group and the Taliban, say experts, but they add that his death would not cause much significant operational damage to Osama bin Laden’s network.
Still, his reported killing late Monday or early Tuesday just outside Mir Ali in north Waziristan represents a significant gain in American or coalition intelligence gathering within the restive tribal belt. As of Thursday, his death had not been officially confirmed.
How telling, that his death was reported and disseminated by Islamist websites while ISAF… well, they’re waiting a few days. You’d think they’d be jumping all over it, assuming the stories of his death at the hands of a Predator are true, as it is a fantastic propaganda coup: ample evidence that, tosh, troops aren’t even needed in the tribal areas. Drones and Hellfires are good enough.
I mean, if we’re sending officers in to deal with these tribes who have not even a basic understanding of the ground dynamic, why not pounce on a reason to emphasize you can kill whomever you want, from wherever you want?
Alas. The U.S. persists in the foolish idea it can export Anbar to Waziristan (quite literally, with the involvement of McCallister) and come out a winner. As usual, leave it to “Afghanistanica” to point out yet another reason why that is such a pea-brained idea.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust