Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach.

Here is a video which shows, metaphorically, what happened over the past decade.  This is what the spread of al-Qaeda looks like:

It is ridiculous to say the formation of the CORE no longer exists ergo the risk no longer exists, and use this as the context for Obama’s claim of victory.

al-Qaeda is compromised of radical Islamic Jihadists all ideologically connected and working to advance the common cause of radical Islam.

The actual jihadist’s, meaning the people doing the fight, flow toward the current fight or engagement where they are needed.    Why can’t the Obama administration understand this fluid maneuvering and construct a policy to combat it effectively?

The Jihadists are currently in the headlines while amassed in Syria and Iraq attacking both political governmental regimes in an effort to advance their ideology.

However, there are also cells working diligently in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Somalia, South Sudan, Mali and just about all of North Africa and Eastern Europe.

It is ridiculous in the extreme for the U.S. President to say:

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”

“I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian”.

“Let’s just keep in mind, Falluja is a profoundly conservative Sunni city in a country that, independent of anything we do, is deeply divided along sectarian lines. And how we think about terrorism has to be defined and specific enough that it doesn’t lead us to think that any horrible actions that take place around the world that are motivated in part by an extremist Islamic ideology are a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”