And while the officials say they worry about a public backlash in response to the civilians killed during the air attacks, those officials also say the strikes may be frightening away potential recruits for terrorism.

Ummm, killing civilians to frighten other people for political purposes? Isn't this the textbook definition of terrorism?

I'm not sure where you are quoting from, but this line seems very much wrong:

"The celebration in many Muslim countries that followed the Sept. 11, 2001,..."

I remember some dancing in Gaza and maybe some celebration in Iran, but I'm not even sure of that. There was no widespread celebration certainly. In fact, most Muslims in the Middle East thought the attacks so horrific they had to have been done by the Mosad. To this day, this explanation polls well.

It was not until we invaded Iraq that most middle eastern Muslims started hating us to the level that Al Qaeda could recruit easily. The fact we are disengaging from Iraq might also have something to do with the fact Al Qaeda is finding it harder to recruit.

The Friend of recruitment is Despair.

S]ome government officials do take quiet, if wary, satisfaction in TWO developments that they say underlie the broad belief that Al Qaeda is on a downhill slope.

There are actually three developments. Number three is the election of Barack Obama in November 2008.

The election of Obama, and the decision to disengage from Iraq, certainly may be having a beneficial effect, but inertia and entropy probably have something to do with this as well. People just can't stay whipped up into a homicidal rage forever, especially when the "revolution" can't deliver on its promises. The Red Brigades of Italy are gone without a trace. Nobody felt like continuing the Baader Meinhof organization after its leaders died (I won't venture a speculation here about how) in prison. Actually, the fizzling out of the tea-partiers, and their imminent defeat in preventing health care legislation, illustrates much the same thing. You just can't stay hysterically angry all the time, especially when your side can't come up with better alternatives.

In late 1944, all signs pointed to the war in Europe being over by Christmas. No one ever won a war by underestimating the enemy.

Just sayin'...

But the war did end 6 months later.

I had fun replacing "Al-Qaeda" with "GOP." It still holds together remarkably well:

On that latter point, it seems many in the Middle [America] who may have initially been sympathetic to [GOP] soon discovered the group had very little to offer in the way of practical solutions to everyday problems.

Now if it were only TRUE that in-country violence and failed solutions would be enough to deflate GOP popularity the same way they did to Al-Qaeda.

T-Rex: You may be right about secular terrorist movements, but religious/ethnic ones are energizer bunnies. Al-Qaeda is a blurry mix of religion, politics and maybe some ethnicity thrown in... not to mention its Saudi bankers who have nationalistic as well as religious reasons to support the group...

Well, as I said earlier, Obama is doing a better job of protecting this country from terrorists than his predecessor. So all that Hope and Change are working out great for me!

Remember when conservatives picked on liberals for emphasizing "law enforcement" when the proper too, they said, should be military force? Well, it's clear that an integration of both is the way to go, and LE is preferred if it can do the job. (Conservatives have a problem with multiplicity in thinking about policy, assessment, etc - part of the Manicheanism.

Al Qaeda members are "one hit wonders" - while their opponents strike again, and again, and again.

No wonder they are finding it's getting tougher to recruit new "talent" for their suicide missions.

many conservatives who may have initially been sympathetic to the Republican Party eventually discovered the group had very little to offer in the way of practical solutions to everyday problems

It's nice to dream.

What too many conveniently forget is that in the period between Russia's collapse in Afghanistan and our arrival to "liberate" the "country", the Taliban was in the process of losing its own control there. the problem was that they were so repressive that even those who might have been their supporters decided their restrictions on dress and music and life in general were just too much.

We might do as well by leaving them in charge once again. If history repeats itself, they'll do themselves in in the process.

The following is a short list of "why they hate us.":

(1) Our intrusive military presence throughout the the world and particularly in the Middle East. The US routinely inflicts on other nations something that we ourselves consider unthinkable: the presence of foreign troops on our soil. The gigantic embassy being built in Baghdad and our disregard for the sovreignty of Pakistan as we pursue al Qaida across their borders are two cases in point, but only a tiny fraction of the whole.

(2) Our continuing support for Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and for the recent slaughter in Gaza. By support, I mean the literally billions of dollars given to Israel in aid every year, along with military technology, and our willingness to turn a blind eye to their nuclear capacity. Alongside this, Obama's denunciation of continuing settlements are worse that useless, they are indisputable proof of our disingenuosness and hypocrisy.

(3) Our commitment to "neoliberal" economics for everybody but us. It is important to understand that the WTO, dominated by the US and its business interests, routinely demands of developing nations that they open themselves up to foreign (Western) investment, and engage in
"free trade" and permit the "free movement of capital." As a matter of historical fact, however, the US and other developed countries grew their economies by establishing "protectionist" trade policies that quite literally protected our fledgling industries from having to compete with the more developed industries of Europe. In fact, the two nations that told us to screw off, India and China, have been the the most successful. This sort of economic coercion, which has everything to do with rigging the game in our favor to the detriment of others, is simply another form of imperialism. This is widely understood everywhere except America. The World Trade Center was not chosen at random.

Neither al Qaida nor Osama Bin Laden ever had much support in the Middle East: his popularity was about the same as George Bush's. However, people in the region do have a grudging respect for people who are willing to stand up the "Great Western Powers", even if they deplore the methods. In so far as the practices described above continue, and Obama has not seriously addressed any of them, resentment of the United States will grow; and no matter how many "terrorists" we kill, we will find ourselves facing ever more dangerous and commited enemies.

The Islamic world probably sees that the only real result of bin Laden's jihad is that nearly a million Iraqis have died premature deaths.

"On that latter point, it seems many in the Middle East who may have initially been sympathetic to al Qaeda soon discovered the group had very little to offer in the way of practical solutions to everyday problems."

Because terrorist movements are not predicated on improving conditions for anyone. They purport to so they garner popular support which is their lifeblood for recruitment and sanctuary. But terrorists are only in it for the terror. There is no political philosophy, no governance philosophy, no nothing.

Terrorists are small, cowardly people who rarely accomplish anything because they don't want to accomplish anything. (The IRA may be an exception to my "rule." But terrorists are terrorists.)

I am always amused by the European World War II analogies. The war should have ended by Christmas. That it didn't was not due to American optimism so much a totalitarian lunacy. There was nothing left to win. Delaying the inevitable just meant more incinerated cities. Terrible. Same logic that extols Ho Chi Minh's defiance. Sometimes you cut a deal with an LBJ and achieve your ends without losing whole generations of people and economic vitality. Terrorism will never be completely defeated so long as there are amoral idiots with a megaphone like Glen Beck. But maybe we can chase them into well known rat-holes for a while.

I'd like to add a third element - Barack Obama is not George Bush.

After the election it was too easy, and simplistic, to say that "everything changed." Still, it was far easier for the Muslim world to vilify George Bush. W. was arrogant, aggressive, hypocritical and dismissive of legitimate Muslim grievances in the Palestinian territories. In short, the perfect poster-child for recruiting and sustaining an anti-American movement.

Barack Obama is not perfect. But neither has he presented the enemy with an easy target the way Bush, Cheney & Associates did.

Since Milton Friedman died in 2006, Conservatives have lost William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol and, just this past week, William Safire. While I disagreed with much of what they believed, at least they had put thought into their ideas.

Conservatives have deified the wrong person. Ronald Reagan was an effective mouthpiece but never put too much thought into anything - even his "deeply" held beliefs. Without Conservative intellectuals like those above Reagan would not have had a script to read from. It's like a hit TV show where the early writers, those responsible for the show's great stories, have all left. The remaining, second-rate writers just rehash old story lines and turn the characters into caricatures. Basically, the Conservative movement has jumped the shark.