The New York Times published an article yesterday which says that our policy of benign neglect has allowed al Qaeda to flourish, and rebuild itself into a force to be reckoned with:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.
[…]
As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization’s hierarchy as intact and strengthening.
[…]
Officials said that both American and foreign intelligence services had collected evidence leading them to conclude that at least one of the camps in Pakistan might be training operatives capable of striking Western targets. A particular concern is that the camps are frequented by British citizens of Pakistani descent who travel to Pakistan on British passports.

The NYT story, as you might expect, has created ripples. It has led to exactly the kind of posts on liberal blogs that you would expect. And exactly the kind of interviews on TV. No doubt for the next few days, Tony Snow will be unable to get through a press briefing without what passes for vigorous questioning by reporters who then go on to file their usual tame reports.

Me, I’m sitting here wondering what to make of the story. It would certainly be worrying, if true. But it’s appeared in the NYT, so how seriously can I take it?

Some might say (plagiarism from the C-in-C; to think that I can sink so low!) that the article makes the administration look bad, so it couldn’t have been planted by the usual suspects. But I’m just going to sit here and scratch my head. The article seems to have a bipolar thing going on. For example, it mentions that “the terrorist network is gaining in strength despite more than five years of a sustained American-led campaign to weaken it”. Sustained? The right word is surely “alleged”? So they’re somehow still shilling for the administration, even when they appear not to be? Are they doing a smart job of it? Probably not. But given how they have been shilling for the administration, presumably smart was tossed out of the window long ago.

So me, I’m sitting here scratching my head, and wondering: “They want us to be scared again for some reason?”

Finally, since we’re talking about al Qaeda, I want to end by expressing my support for pluralistic religions everywhere, those that don’t believe in a one true God (Hinduism will do very nicely, for example). One true Gods have an entirely unfortunate tendency to enjoin you to save the unbelievers by converting them to the path of the one true God. To save them, or failing that, to wipe them out—the people as well as the religion. In that spirit (expressing my support etc.), I rise from my chair and declaim: “Allahs-hu-Akbar!” (Just-in-case translation: “Gods are great!”)

Hindus, you see, are not allowed to say “God is great”. That just makes them fight among themselves as to which one you meant. Which not only leads to unnecessary complications in the afterlife, but also increases the odds of being reincarnated as a cockroach (even if those odds may be virtually incalculable).