couple ofdi jihadis to places, y the banner of al qaereda, and t american generals come running with their armies. well, he s right. i mean, 9/11 provided the opportunity to invade iraq, which had nothing to do with al qaeda. and today we are i engaging in what i call blood feuds in pakistan and waziristan with a tribe in waziristan. and now in yemen apparently we re getting into a blood feud there. so this inability to define terrorism and islamic militancy is getting us into one more after another. we are not out of iraq, and it s unlikely we will be completely out next year. we re putting a lot of pressure on islamabad by fighting in the tribal areas. and now we ve got yemen. so i mean, this is turning into an endless war. and it s got little to do with al qaeda, and i think a lot of this has to do with overreaction to 9/11. rick, do you worry that you
a real heyday slaughtering shiite women and children had a profound effect it took a while, but profound effect on sunni arab attitudes in the middleast and, needless to say, the attacks in the sunni arab world. and i thinklso in pakistan, inevitably bounced back against al qaeda and theirt ability to prent themselves as sort of modern day paladans of a just islamic cause. you ve been arguing for a while that this is actually a sea change that has been relatively unnoticed in the muslim world, right? yes. absolutely. in fact, al qaeda has not just suffered, faree a catastrophic military defeat. i would argue a more criticalat development is the fact that al qaeda has lost the struggle for muslim hearts and minds. yet fareed, here we are today.
muslim societies. let s talk for a moment about the danger, the damage of all this erkill. you re livingy outside the country now. what is your sense of the united states war on terror, homeland security measures, how have they affected america, its image, its security? fareed, at the height of its power, al qaeda numbered between 3,000 and 4,000 fighters in the late 1990s. according to all our intelligence services and also independent experts now you have between 300 and me400 surviving members of al qaeda, between 300 and 400 surviving members. most of them located in the pakistan tribal areas. most of them are rookies because most of the field lieutenants, most of the brains, the skill, the mid level managers have been either killed or captured. no decision-makers. the top leadehip of al qaeda basically is hibernating
my answer is unequivocally yes. look, aqaeda flourished when governments the world over treated it as ara minor annoyan rather than a major national security challenge. since 9/11, cockpit doors are now sealed so planes can t be used as bombs. her simple security measures that focus on travel have made open societies much less vulnerable. al qaeda terrorists and their ilk are being chainsed around ede mountains of afghanistan. they are being bombed in mo pakistan. their money trails are being tracked the world over. it s very tough to plan major terrorist attacks in that environment. so smaller local gs inspired but not directed by al qaeda have found ways to attack easy, open targets like cafes, nightclubs, train stations. but the result is they kill locals rather than americans or brits or foreign soldiers. and of course this means that