Sustaining confrontational initiatives of African, Oriental and Asian countries brings Global War on Terror victory by frustrating plans, breaking alliances and fracturing organizations of Wahhabi jihadists into ever less effective units. Without cities, countries or armies they live out unnaturally shortened lives as pariahs. Sun Tzu would consider mobilizing allies to minimize bloodshed and isolate the enemy, a great achievement for this “Long War”.
The alternative allows terrorists to find the type of benign or supportive collegial environments for the innovative, collaborative thinking that turns Admiral Allen’s article into reality.
Terrorists have continued to use small craft to exploit the open expanses of the maritime domain and avoid detection while striking maritime targets when they are most vulnerable. In October 2002, al Qaeda operatives packed a small fishing vessel with explosives and drove it into the side of the French supertanker Limburg 12 miles off the Yemen coast. In November 2005, 100 miles off the coast of Somalia, terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked the cruise ship Seabourne Spirit using two 25-foot rigid-hull inflatable boats.