In "Terrorism’s Two Front War," Huffington Post blogger Adam Elkus outlines the current debate on the state of Al Qaeda. "The main question: is Al Qaeda still a disciplined organization with a
central command or a loose network of self-directed amateurs?" says Elkus. "At the center of the debate are the counter-terrorist community’s two
leading scholars, Marc Sageman and Bruce Hoffman. A former CIA officer
and forensic psychiatrist, Sageman argues in his new book Leaderless Jihad
that Al Qaeda’s core operational capabilities are no more. What remains
is a ragtag cohort of self-radicalized "wannabes" throughout the West
and the greater Muslim world, unpredictable and dangerous but largely
incapable of carrying out major attacks."
Bruce Hoffman, professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, strongly criticized Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.
