U.S. launches commando raids in North Africa

What happened

In a sign that the Obama administration could be shifting away from drone strikes as its anti-terrorism weapon of choice, U.S. special operations forces last week staged audacious and almost simultaneous raids in Libya and Somalia aimed at capturing two leading Islamist militants. In Tripoli, Delta Force commandos grabbed Abu Anas al-Libi, 49, an al Qaida leader indicted by a New York court for planning the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. Witnesses in Tripoli told reporters that three vehicles full of armed, masked men surrounded al-Libi’s car as he returned home from dawn prayers. The men smashed his windows, dragged him into a black Mercedes, and sped away. Al-Libi is now being held on a Navy ship for interrogation, and President Obama vowed that he “will be brought to justice”—a criminal trial in U.S. federal courts. Libya’s Western-backed government denounced the operation as a “flagrant violation” of national sovereignty, but U.S. officials said authorities in Tripoli had tacitly approved the raid.

On the same day, a Navy SEAL team launched an amphibious assault on a Somali village with the goal of capturing Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, a senior commander with al-Shabab—the group responsible for last month’s bloody attack on a Nairobi, Kenya, shopping mall. But U.S. officials said the SEAL team withdrew following a fierce firefight, deciding they could not capture Abdulkadir, also known as Ikrima, without endangering women and children in his compound. An al-Shabab spokesman hailed the group’s victory over “white infidel soldiers,” but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the raids had sent a clear message to terrorists: “[They] can run, but they can’t hide.”

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What the editorials said

Obama was right to use ground forces rather than obliterate these targets with drones, said The Baltimore Sun. Such operations reduce the risk of killing innocent bystanders or hitting the wrong target, “both of which fuel hatred for Americans among the population and aid the terrorists’ recruitment efforts.” As a member of al-Qaida’s core leadership, al-Libi is also worth more alive than dead, since U.S. officials can now grill him about the group’s organization and plans for future attacks.

Ideally, this terrorist would be brought to Guantánamo and tried by military commission, said The Wall Street Journal. “But it apparently offends the Obama administration’s political sensibilities less to keep captured killers on board a ship for weeks instead.” That’s how Obama dealt with Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali militant captured in 2011 and held at sea for two months. “Secret prison, anyone?”

What the columnists said

These raids were an effective display of U.S. power, said Nicholas Schmidle in NewYorker.com. A critical, moral message is conveyed by “operations that bring us into the heart of hostile territory, one that shows a resolve otherwise absent in wars led by flying robots.” If al-Libi is shipped to Manhattan for trial—rather than to a shady Middle East regime for torture, as he would have been under President George W. Bush—“there is something noble to that, too.”

But such operations “will not by themselves win the war on terror,” said Max Boot in the New York Post. The U.S. needs a long-term plan to stop vulnerable nations from becoming al Qaida hideouts. Following the NATO-backed revolution against Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, the U.S. failed to provide sufficient support to the new government in Tripoli. The country now looks like Afghanistan pre-9/11, with Islamist militants controlling vast swathes of territory. Somalia also remains largely ungoverned, said -Massimo Calabresi in Time.com, giving al-Shabab the space it needs to plot devastating attacks. “With safe havens thriving in rogue countries, the threat of these terrorist groups still exists.”

Like it or not, special operations forces are the future of American war, said David Francis in TheFiscalTimes.com. The public has no appetite for another Iraq- or Afghanistan-style conflict, and thanks to movies, computer games, and the military’s own messaging, many Americans think our elite troops are invincible superheroes who can defeat any enemy. But “war is not a video game,” and sooner or later, a raid will go wrong. Will the public remain as enthusiastic about commando raids if they cost American lives?