Not by a long shot. What they have done, though, is make it very difficult for ordinary Iraqis to conduct their daily lives and for their infrastructure to get repaired and upgraded.

Al Qaida waged and *won* a campaign to make sure that the US wouldn’t control Iraq.

They haven't won until we give up. Still, that's the very nature of asymmetrical warfare. Guerrillas and terrorists can attack soft targets and wreak havok while counterintersurgency is a slow, laborious process. That's not a function of great military prowess, just the nature of the enterprises.

James: "Otherwise, though, it doesn’t take an inordinate amount of technical or tactical competence to murder hapless civilians in a marketplace. "

Considering that Al Qaida + Baathists + Shiite leaders have decisively whipped US forces in Iraq, perhaps we shouldn't be so foolish. Al Qaida waged and *won* a campaign to make sure that the US wouldn't control Iraq.

Word.

The fact of the matter is that the GWOT cannot be won by killing all of the terrorists until they are all dead. We will not stop terrorism by killing all of the terrorists. It simply does not work that way. I'm sorry - I wish it were that easy too - but reality is reality.

The best way to fight the GWOT is to try and keep people from becoming terrorists. In that, the Bush Administration has failed miserably. Since 9/11, pro-American foreigners have become anti-American, moderate Arabs have become extremist Arabs, and Muslims who held strong anti-Western convictions but were otherwise not engaged in violence have become terrorists.

Killing terrorists is fine and good. But it is not true that there is a "finite number" of terrorists that can someday be exhausted - at least in any meaningful sense.

I'm happy to hear a terrorist is dead, but I'll be much more happy to hear Guantanamo is no more. That will be a blow against terrorism.

>Presumably, there’s a finite supply of these people

Why do you think that? How many enemies has Isreal killed in the last few decades? Funny. there always seems to be more to take their place.

Actually, its not funny, because we are now going down the same bloody road that Isreal has traveled for so many years. No peace, no security, just more dead on both sides...

there’s a finite supply of these people

My guess is exactly the opposite...it seems to me like every year there would be a whole new set of people coming of age and ready to take on a leadership role.

It comes back to the key question I guess: are we killing them faster than they can make more?