Obama's counterterrorism policy facing mounting criticism

WASHINGTON -- At the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, it was a cause for celebration: Meticulous intelligence analysis backed by Hellfire missiles had paid off, once again.

The CIA launched a drone strike last month on a Yemeni beach at three men it determined were al-Qaida militants. One of them turned out to be Nasser al-Wahishi, about as important a figure as agency man-hunters could hope to eliminate. He had been both al-Qaida's second in command and the leader of the group's dangerous Yemeni affiliate.

American officials touted the death as a big victory. But did the demise of another senior extremist, the latest in a long line to be taken off the battlefield, make the United States and its allies any safer?

To many experts, including a growing number of former Obama administration national security advisers, that proposition is less convincing by the day.

With al-Qaida and the Islamic State group enjoying safe havens across parts of Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and with terror attacks on the rise worldwide, doubts are growing about the effectiveness and sustainability of the administration's "light footprint" strategy against global extremist movements.

A template predicated on training local forces and bombing terrorists from the air actually is making the situation worse, some say.

Many are arguing for deeper U.S. involvement -- if not with regular ground troops, then at least with elite advisers and commandos taking more risks in more places.

"What they are doing now is making it more likely that there will be a bigger, more disastrous catastrophe for the United States," said David Sedney, who resigned in 2013 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Drone strikes are not creating a safer, more stable world," Sedney said, and neither is the limited bombing campaign the Pentagon is running against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Both are creating new enemies, he added, without a plan to defeat them.

On Thursday, the Pentagon announced a June 16 air strike had killed Tariq bin Tahar al-'Awni al-Harzi, an Islamic State group leader who had facilitated suicide bombings.

"His death will impact ISIL's ability to integrate foreign terrorist fighters into the Syrian and Iraqi fight," military spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said.

But for how long, critics are wondering, including former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn, who accuses the administration for which he once worked of "policy confusion."

Former Army deputy chief Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner says the Obama administration's policy of "benign neglect" toward strife-torn Yemen and Syria has ensured the existence of terrorist safe havens there for both al-Qaida and Islamic State militants.

Even Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defense for policy who was the president's first choice to replace Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, wrote last month the U.S. effort against the Islamic State is "faltering" and urged a more robust approach.

Current officials dispute the criticism, but they declined to make anyone available to speak on the record.

The administration's position is the failure of al-Qaida or the Islamic State to launch a coordinated attack on the U.S. homeland is the best evidence the strategy is working.

Timothy Hoyt, a professor of counterterrorism studies at the Naval War College, agreed. Terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies have been far less lethal than past campaigns in Britain by the Irish Republican Army, he said, "which suggests that some elements of our counterterrorism strategy are working."

It's "absurd," he said, to blame U.S. policy for an uptick in sectarian violence across a Middle East convulsed by political upheaval.

Drone strikes clearly have made it harder for terrorists to plan complex attacks, he said.

While the strikes create international backlash, he added, there is no evidence they are a driving force in the growth of terror networks.