Bin Laden Alone

Peter Bergen argues that al-Qaeda is being strangled by its own fanaticism:

[T]he jihadist militants are incapable of turning themselves into a genuine mass political movement because their ideology prevents them from making the kind of real-world compromises that would allow them to engage in normal politics. Indeed, rather than cut deals with new friends, bin Laden has kept adding to his list of enemies, including any Muslim who doesn't precisely share his ultra-fundamentalist worldview. The enemies list grows and grows. Al-Qaeda has said it is opposed to all Middle Eastern regimes; the Shia; most Western countries; Jews and Christians; the governments of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Russia; most news organizations; most humanitarian organizations; and the United Nations. This is no way to increase market share.

Maybe It's So, Joe

The founding executive director of the Nixon Center in Washington is making big waves with a report that second-guesses the Bush-Obama policy in Afghanistan. The "Economist":

An impressively succinct report published this week by a bipartisan group convened by Steve Clemons, a hyper-networked denizen of the New America Foundation, says simply that the president's counter-insurgency strategy is not working, cannot work, and is based on a flawed understanding of America's interests in the country. In effect, it resurrects the Joe Biden idea that nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool's errand, and that America can take care of its strategic interests in the country at far less risk and cost by stripping down its ambitions there.