Payback Feels Right, But Leads to More Terrorism: Robert Wright

Just shy of 10 years ago, on Sept. 12, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.S. and its allies would “go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world” and “get it by its branch and root” so that it could “be brought to an end.” Things haven’t worked out that way.

Sure, we’ve had our successes. We’ve killed the No. 3 guy in al-Qaeda at least three times, and we finally even killed the No. 1 guy. Yet al-Qaeda itself seems to be multiplying. There’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and so on, not to mention various off-brand groups (al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria) that are on al-Qaeda’s team. This growing terrorist infrastructure has us mired in far-flung hostilities -- boots on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia -- and these hostilities, in turn, foster the very hatred of America that keeps the jihadist recruits coming.