Good point by Joe Klein
This is how it should be done. The Bush Administration derided the "police work" approach to rolling up Al Qaeda, but–of course–police work is precisely what it takes in many cases. (In war zones, like Waziristan, more kinetic tactics, like the use of armed Predator drones, is also appropriate.) One hopes that with less public melodrama, less Presidential bloodlust rhetoric, there will be more events like this arrest of a major Al Qaeda operative–and even though they’ll be reported in the back pages, the damage to the terrorist network will be extensive.
Of course, blowing up a lot of buildings and then hosing them down with automatic weapons is more exciting that the painful drudgery of police work, but in the long run police work is how terrorism will be stopped. The military actions are best seen as external support for when a terrorist training camp is found. But when terrorists are among civilians, military actions are counterproductive, as Israel and Bush have shown us. In those cases, military actions are exactly what the terrorists want.
