Barring embassy doors isn't enough

I like bipartisanship as much as the next guy. Still, the Washington Post headline Monday was disheartening: "Embassy, consulate closures applauded on both sides of the aisle."

I don't doubt that intelligence analysts had evidence indicating that a terrorist attack was imminent. I don't dispute that shutting down diplomatic facilities for a few days was prudent.

I do worry that, a dozen years after 9/11, America's response to terrorism — applauded by Republicans and Democrats alike — is to turn out the lights and lock the doors.

And to persist in self-delusion. "Today, the core of al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat," President Barack Obama asserted in what was billed as a major speech at the National Defense University May 23.

Consider: (1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as AQ's Numero Uno, is an active manager who appoints commanders on battlefields from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa. He holds conference calls, orders acts of terrorism and strategizes for a well-funded global organization.

(2) If — despite what I've outlined above — core AQ is in decline, the fact remains that embassies and consulates in 17 countries were closed because the president believes AQ affiliates have the capability to launch serious attacks in all those places. That's not "the path to defeat" — it's more like the HOV lane.

One al-Qaida affiliate was defeated — by American troops in Iraq commanded by Gen. David Petraeus. But, as Thomas Joscelyn, my colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently wrote, since those troops departed, "al-Qaida has redoubled its efforts in the country and expanded into neighboring Syria," where it is seen as the most effective fighting force. In Afghanistan, from which the U.S. also is withdrawing, "al-Qaida holds onto territory and its allies vie for supremacy." Groups that have pledged allegiance to AQ threaten other countries — the list has not been shrinking.

At a minimum, the administration should delay the fulfillment of its pledge to "end" the use of drones, a weapon that remains useful — as the administration demonstrated Tuesday when it launched a couple of them at al-Qaida combatants in Yemen.

In his speech, the president also called for the repeal of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, Congress' declaration of war on al-Qaida. Current developments make clear why that would be unwise. As Joscelyn also reported, Interpol last week issued a "global security alert advising increased vigilance for terrorist activity" based on the fact that in recent days AQ and/or its affiliates succeeded in springing more than a thousand "mujahedeen" from prisons in Iraq, Pakistan and Libya.

Those prison breaks should give the president second thoughts about his plans to release additional detainees from Guantanamo. Just last month, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula confirmed, in a video posted to jihadist websites, that its deputy leader and co-founder, Saeed al-Shihri, was killed in a drone strike. Al-Shihri, a Saudi, had spent six years at Gitmo. As CNN analyst Peter Bergen reported, that video was delivered by Ibrahim al-Rubaish — another Saudi formerly held at Guantanamo.

On Wolf Blitzer's program the other night, Bergen and I debated the state of al-Qaida. He continues to contend that the organization is "on life support." He noted that it has been years since AQ launched a successful attack against the American homeland.

True — but dumb luck played a major role in foiling the plot to bomb a passenger jet bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, the plot to blow up cargo planes with bombs hidden in printer cartridges in 2010, and the plot hatched by the Times Square bomber also in 2010.

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