The correct response would have been ACTIONS which indicate that European countries are committed to destroying Al Qaeda. There is very little evidence for such a commitment even in the supposedly easy case of Afghanistan (are we up to even a pittance of European troops there? 10,000 even?)

If groups such as Al-Qaeda (and affiliates), Hamas and Hizbullah are destroyed or incapacitated, and the idea that terrorism is a viable method of defeating non-Islamist regimes and creating a Caliphate is discredited, the war on (Islamic) terror will be won. Al-Qaeda specifically predicts that the West is a “paper tiger” that will fold under pressure – this is why the Madrid election results were so worrying.

The justification of the war in Iraq as a war against al-Qaeda was on exceedingly shaky grounds. However, the justification that it was part of the “War on Terror” was accurate – Hussein was funding anti-Israeli terrorism and attempted to have Bush Snr assassinated. I was originally opposed to the war in Iraq, but the realisation that I was in a sense applying a double standard (some terrorism should be stopped while other terrorism can be tolerated) helped to sway me to the other side of the argument.

It isn’t that hard to work out. Fifteen to twenty thousand people go through training camps and return to their home countries or bases. The infrastructure that did this is destroyed, yet the smaller cells continue to operate. This may restrict the operations to smaller actions than before, but individual cells still continue to fight. But still this is better than leaving the camps and infrastructure in place in Afghanistan.

HP: I agree that al-Qaeda is very much a loose network, but perhaps not quite as loose as you are saying. Certainly, if Usama bin Laden decides on Tuesday that, say, Holland needs to learn a lesson, there won’t be a bombing in Amsterdam Wednesday morning. Claims of responsibility by al-Qaeda linked groups also sometimes turn out to be false. However, this does not mean that bin Laden is irrelevant.

I wrote a thesis last year in which I analysed statements made by Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and some other main al-Qaeda figures. I have read statements by satellite groups such as South East Asia’s Jamaah Islamiyya, and Morocco’s Salafiyya Jihadiyya, and they are uncannily similar in their outlooks.

During the Afghan Jihad, Abdullah Azzam and Usama bin Laden worked together recruiting mujahideen around the world. All the foreign jihadis passed through Usama bin Laden’s hands, and he kept records. A new ideology was born in Afghanistan, and when the “Afghan Arabs” returned to their own countries, a worldwide network was formed. Thousands of jihadis have pledged bayat (allegiance) to bin Laden. They have been trained and given funding by al-Qaeda, and are contacted by the group through a network of cells.

When bin Laden issues a statement like this, it does hold a great deal of weight.

“Lost, every time.”

Suez Crisis, 1956.

And no, treating terrorism as a criminal matter, albeit a very serious one, wasn’t America’s strategy before 9/11. Clinton bombed two countries over Al Qaeda, one of which demonstrably had very little to do with it. If bin Laden has such a large amount of public support, it leds credence to the idea that at least some people do think this is a clash of civilisations – a word invented for an entirely different purpose by an American political scientist well after Al Qaeda started trying to blow up bits of the West.

It also leds credence to the idea that as a media campaign, the US isn’t winning. I think the media campaign is the real war and the fighting is a sideshow. And, I think the war is going very badly. Especially right now.

We tried that before Sept 2001 and it was a disaster. The Mc Veigh comparison seems wrong. He did not have the same level of popular support that Bin Laden enjoys. For example, 13.5% of British Muslims believe that the US is deserving of further attacks by Al Qaeda.

The idea that the war on terror is a war on an abtraction is risible. An abstraction did not destroy the world trade centre, bomb the USS Cole or kill innocents outside the US embassy in Nairobi. This so-called “abstraction” had bases in Afghanistan that the war on terror has now removed.

The reason that Bin Laden is now more of a spiritual head, rather than hands on in charge as before, is because his organisation has been dismantled. His plans to reform Islam seem a little shaky now after, he failed to ignite the clash of civilisations he expected.

I think bin Laden’s much the same. He encourages Muslim extremists to commit acts of terrorism. Muslim extremists do, and then bin Laden sits back and says, “I told them to do that.”

Given that al-Qaeda is a loose affiliation of decentralized cells, I think it’d be a real stretch to describe al-Qaeda as having anything like a hierarchical leadership structure. Bin Laden doesn’t have the power to speak for the terrorists who act in his name.

If someone’s really committed to bombing Barcelona, or Athens, or Paris, do you really think bin Laden could stop them?