KABUL — The United States is “within reach” of defeating al-Qaeda and is targeting 10 to 20 leaders who are key to the terrorist network’s survival, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in his first trip to Afghanistan since taking charge at the Pentagon.
Panetta, who led the CIA until June and oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, strongly endorsed the Obama administration’s increasingly aggressive campaign to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
He hinted of more to come, saying he would redouble efforts by the military and spy agency to work together on counterterrorism missions outside the traditional war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them, because I do believe that if we continue this effort that we can really cripple al-Qaeda as a threat to this country,” he told reporters on his plane en route to Afghanistan.
“I’m convinced,” he added, “that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.”
Panetta’s remarks were his first public comments since he became defense secretary July 1, as well as perhaps the most optimistic assessment by the Obama administration regarding the long-running conflict with al-Qaeda.
Although the CIA and the U.S. military have assembled lists of al-Qaeda leaders targeted for assassination or capture ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, Panetta argued that the longtime strategy of trying to defeat the network by focusing largely on its senior ranks — an approach that analysts refer to as “decapitation” — was finally paying dividends.
His statements about a fading al-Qaeda were echoed shortly after his arrival in Kabul on Saturday by Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Petraeus said that U.S. drone strikes in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghan border, had done “enormous damage” to al-Qaeda beyond the killing of bin Laden.
“That has very significantly disrupted their efforts,” Petraeus said, “and it does hold the prospect of really a strategic defeat — if you will, a strategic dismantling of al-Qaeda.”
Petraeus is retiring from the Army this summer and is scheduled to take over Panetta’s former job as director of the CIA in September.
Panetta, who was scheduled to meet later with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said he had “a very good relationship” with Karzai and hoped that a turnover in Obama’s national security team would help improve ties.
