W: Perhaps it is fallacious to believe that intelligence operations and diplomacy can be neatly separated from military activity in the age of terrorism. Intelligence work and diplomacy — even law enforcement — cannot long survive without security.

The clandestine nature of the CIA’s UAV strikes, combined with their primary role as a gatherer of real-time surveillance, puts them, together with special forces ops, squarely in the realm of intelligence work in regards to the war on terrorism.

Military activity of the sort that involves uniformed Marines and soldiers on the ground in the political vacuum that is the Afghan-Pakistan border area ends up, more often than not, being tasked solely with its own force protection, and they serve as a visible symbol of “occupation” and thus a rallying influence for Jihad.

The Rand Corporation, in their report titled “How Terrorist Groups End – Lessons for Countering al Qaida” looked at the factors that result in the termination of terrorist activity after studying 648 terrorist groups between 1968 and 2006. They concluded that 43% of the time the terrorist groups convert into mainstream political movements. Forty percent of the time law enforcement activity and intelligence work bring them to heel. Ten percent of the time, the terrorists quit because they achieve their stated goals, while only 7% of the time does military action (since 9-11-01 the primary emphasis of the US War on Terrorism) neutralize the terrorists.