[National Review] James S. Robbins - If you are hunting terrorists it is useful to go where the terrorists are. On Sunday U.S. Special Forces raided Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border with Iraq, to capture Abu Ghadian, Al-Qaeda in Iraq's man in Syria, who was the group's chief coordinator funneling arms and insurgents into Iraq. The computers and cell phones scooped up in the raid surely will provide a profusion of useful intelligence. The U.S. raid was a well-planned surgical strike that took the fight into a terrorist sanctuary produced by Syrian incompetence or complicity. Syria's inability to keep terrorists from using their territory as a base of operations (if not complicity in hosting them) obligated the U.S. to act. Violent non-state groups cannot operate across international borders from countries lacking either the means or motivation to stop them and expect the convention of state sovereignty to protect them.
2008-10-29 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive