The United States has about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Peter Bergen and Leslie H. Gelb
Time

In August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight in Afghanistan: If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people. Obamas Af-Pak plan is, in essence, a countersanctuary strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. Under Obama, the Pentagon has already sent a surge of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, and the Administration is even weighing the possibility of deploying as many as 40,000 more.

This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak.

The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest on a number of flawed assumptions. The first is that Afghans always treat foreign forces as antibodies. In fact, poll after poll since the fall of the Taliban has found that a majority of Afghans have a favorable view of the international forces in their country. A BBC/ABC News poll conducted this year, for instance, showed that 63% of Afghans have a favorable view of the U.S. military. To those who say you cant trust polls taken in Afghanistan, its worth noting that the same type of poll consistently finds neighboring Pakistan to be one of the most anti-American countries in the world.

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A lawyer for Najibullah Zazi disputed claims that bomb-making plans were found on his client's computer.

CNN

Najibullah Zazi, the man at the center of a probe into a suspected terror plot against a target in the New York area, has admitted ties to al Qaeda, an administration official familiar with the matter told CNN Friday.

Either a plea deal or charges are possible, the official said.

The terror plot that came to light this week following raids in New York may have been targeting a major transportation center, sources close to the investigation told CNN on Thursday.

There was planning and preparation for an attack, presumably in the New York area, where there would be a large number of people and where security screening is lax such as a large railroad or subway station, essentially where there is no airport-style screening, the sources said.

Dick Cheney is criticizing the latest Obama move.

Alexander Mooney
CNN Ticker Producer

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is again taking aim at President Obama, issuing a statement Monday suggesting the administration's decision to name a prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations under President Bush fuels "doubts about this administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security."

"The people involved deserve our gratitude," Cheney said in the statement. "They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."

The former vice president also said documents released Monday prove enhanced interrogation techniques yielded valuable information that "provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda."

"This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks," Cheney said. "These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002."

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Al Qaeda training in Yemen.

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Middle East Affairs Editor
AC360° Contributor

Eight independent newspapers were shut down last week by orders of the Yemeni Ministry of Information. Hundreds of people took to the streets in Sanaa and other major cities to protest the move, according to media reports. Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh accused the newspapers of “harming Yemen’s national unity.” In a televised statement, he said, “Some newspapers use exaggerated slogans under the pretext of democracy and shamelessly promote divisiveness.”

The move comes on the heels of recent news coverage about clashes in the south between security forces and farmers who claim they have been marginalized by the government. The south has been demanding its own Democratic Republic of Yemen since 1994. The separatist rhetoric has escalated in the past few months with groups and tribal leaders calling on the southern region to unify against the government of Ali Abdallah Saleh.

Before the newspaper closure, the US Embassy in Sanaa issued a statement expressing its “concern” over reports of “increasing incidences of political violence in southern regions of Yemen.” It stressed US support for a “unified Yemen” and called on “the Yemeni Government, the political parties, civil society organizations and all concerned citizens of Yemen to engage in dialogue to identify and address legitimate grievances.” The statement concluded with a recommendation for a peaceful resolution, “violence will not resolve these issues.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed its alarm over the situation. "We are concerned about the ongoing ban on independent newspapers and call on the authorities to immediately end this censorship," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "Covering the ongoing conflict in the south is an essential journalistic function, and for authorities to ban this coverage is to criminalize journalism itself."

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Oren Gross
Special to CNN

Popular clichés notwithstanding, not all is fair in war. The idea that war is subject to legal rules is an ancient one.

Over time nations have come to accept that their decisions whether to go to war as well as how to conduct warfare once armed conflict has erupted are limited by legal norms.

But do such limitations hold when the enemy is not another nation that itself plays, more or less, by the rules, but rather a nonstate actor such as al Qaeda that flagrantly ignores them?

Does not following the rules in this context mean that we would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back? And if so, should not all be fair at least in war against such an enemy? Yes, yes, and an emphatic no.

Al Qaeda does not pose a threat to the United States' (or any of its allies') existence. Its real threat lies in provoking us to employ authoritarian measures that would weaken the fabric of our democracy, discredit the United States internationally, diminish our ability to utilize our soft power and undermine our claim to the moral higher ground in the fight against the terrorists.

In other words, the critical threat is not that the United States would fail to defend itself but that it would do so too well and in the process become less democratic and lose sight of its fundamental values. "Whoever fights monsters," warned Friedrich Nietzsche, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

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Editor's Note: The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies are moving in dangerously close to Islamabad, the capital of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Officials there say Taliban militants have set up checkpoints and taken control over the Buner District in the North West Frontier Province - just 60 miles away. That's the closest they’ve ever been. This alone is dangrous, but coupled with increasing political conflict in Pakistan, the situation looks like it could become explosive.

On Monday Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari signed into law a peace deal for a Northwest region on the Aghan border called Swat Valley. The deal approved the strictest interpretation of Islamic law, known as Sharia Law.

Critics said the Pakistani president was caving to pressure from Taliban clerics who threatened to pull out of any peace deal on Swat Valley unless Sharia Law was approved. For anyone tracking the radicalization of Swat Valley since 9/11, the arrival of Sharia law is no surprise. The burning question now is, how safe is the US’ nuclear ally Pakistan from the threat of extremists and their military advancement?

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Editor
Middle East affairs

Is al Qaeda operating freely and enjoying support inside our nuclear ally Pakistan? A frightening notion. But the new US strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan seems to reinforce that view.

The US had already stepped up its attacks on the tribal regions of Pakistan since 2007 against what it called al Qaeda targets, and has reportedly launched at least five drone attacks since President Obama took office. And the newest information is even more sobering. In a background briefing with reporters last week, one official said, al Qaeda has relocated itself to Pakistan and "succeeded in regenerating itself." He said, "they're plotting against the United States. They are working with their friends and partners, the Taliban, against American interests" and they operate "within a very sophisticated syndicate of terrorist organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

A grim picture for the West, but it seems to match the rhetoric from al Qaeda’s leadership. In a March 19 audio message, Osama bin Laden mentioned the Swat valley of Pakistan as a place where Muslims are “successfully resisting America.” He said, “All intelligent people are aware of America’s combating of Islam, and its past rejection of its establishment in Somalia, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan; and here they are protesting its establishment in the Swat region of Pakistan.” This quote might suggest that bin Laden recorded his message while somewhere in the Swat region.
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks with CNN's Jill Dougherty about U.S.-Iranian relations and al Qaeda.

Eboo Patel
The Washington Post

In 150 lucid pages, Bruce Riedel gets inside the heart of Al Qaeda and shows us how to kill it. The Search for Al Qaeda understands Al Qaeda for what it is: a set of highly effective leaders who have created a compelling narrative (based partly on American missteps in the Muslim world) and a remarkably resilient organizational structure that seduces a small group of young Muslims to destroy in a highly strategic manner.

Effective leaders, compelling narrative, resilient structure, willing youth and strategic destruction – a killer combination.

But one which – with the right vision, message and strategy – can be defeated.

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Ali al-Shiri was released in 2007 from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A Saudi national released from U.S. detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2007 is believed to be a key leader in al Qaeda's operations in Yemen, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official.

The Defense Department recently estimated that more than 60 terrorists released from Guantanamo may have returned to the battlefield.

According to the counterterrorism official, freed detainee Ali al-Shiri traveled to Yemen after being released to Saudi Arabia and may have been involved in recent al Qaeda attacks in Yemen, including a car bombing outside the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa last year that killed nearly a dozen people.

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A U.S. soldier patrols in a village north of Kabul, Afghanistan, last month.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

In the war against al Qaeda and its allies, Barack Obama should adopt five key principles when he takes office.

First, the United States must lower the temperature in the Muslim world to help win back the "swing voters" in the Islamic world who turned against America and provide passive support to al Qaeda.

The Obama administration can do this by working as an honest broker to resolve conflicts such as those in Kashmir and Israel/Palestine that serve as grievances for Muslims and sometimes training grounds for militants.

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