Doubts Linger Over Targeting Al-Qaida Safe Havens

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• MARGARET WARNER:

  Senior al-Qaida leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was one of six suspected militants killed on Monday in a daring daylight U.S. helicopter assault in southern Somalia. Nabhan was one of the most wanted al-Qaida operatives in the region, for the deadly 1998 East African embassy bombings and the bloody 2002 bombing of a Kenyan beach resort popular with Israelis.

  National Public Radio reported today he also trained recruits from Minneapolis to join the ranks of a Somali group of Islamist militants, Al-Shabaab.

  Nabhan was being sheltered in lawless Somalia by that group, which is believed to be loosely linked to al-Qaida. Al-Shabaab has fueled two decades of fighting in pursuit of its chief aim, to topple the Somali government.

  The Pentagon refused to comment on yesterday's raid, but the Associated Press reported the attack was carried out by Navy SEALs and Army helicopters launched off two U.S. warships in the region.

  The raid played into an ongoing debate in Washington about how best to contain and defeat al-Qaida. The U.S. has gone after militant leaders in western Pakistan using drone attacks.

  But in Afghanistan, the U.S. has sent 65,000 combat troops to help the Afghan government take on the indigenous Islamist group, the Taliban. Yesterday, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen testified the war was essential to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for international terror groups like al-Qaida.

  And today, a leaked draft administration document on "evaluating progress in Afghanistan-Pakistan" underscored that point. It cited as objective number one, "Disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks."

  But in an opinion piece in today's Washington Post, entitled "Who's Afraid of a Terrorist Safe Haven?" former CIA counterterror official Paul Pillar dismissed that rationale for the war, calling it a "flawed assumption."

  And to take up the safe havens issue, Paul Pillar joins us now. He currently heads the security studies program at Georgetown University. With him is Reuel Gerecht, a former case officer at the CIA. He's now a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

  Thank you both for being here.

  Paul Pillar, so, beginning with you, you called it a flawed assumption, the very assumption and objective that Mike Mullen and the president have laid out, which is the reason we're at war in Afghanistan is to prevent al-Qaida from returning there and establishing a haven. What is flawed about that assumption?