Back in 2004, in a video addressed to the American people, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden described his “bleed until bankruptcy” strategy. “All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies,” bin Laden taunted. “So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

The twin goals of this strategy were to drain the U.S. of resources by baiting it into expensive, open-ended military interventions like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the resulting anger over those interventions causing more people to join Al Qaeda’s cause.

I was reminded of that by these specific remarks from President Obama’s speech on counterterrorism yesterday:

The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

There was a lot to chew on in the president’s speech, and obviously we’ll have to wait and see how much weight the president actually puts behind some of the reforms he suggested, but I think this core passage represents another important shift away from the rhetorical construct of a “Global War on Terror.”

Meanwhile, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, four of the Senate’s leading hawks — Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Saxby Chambliss (GA) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) — responded as you might expect to the prospect of the loss of that rhetorical construct, which has proven extremely politically beneficial to hawks over the last decade.

“I believe we are still in a long, drawn-out conflict with Al Qaeda. to somehow argue that Al Qaeda is ‘on the run’ comes from a degree of unreality that, to me, is really incredible,” said McCain, adding: “Al Qaeda’s ‘on the run’ is expanding all over the Middle East from Mali to Yemen and all places in between and to somehow think that we can bring the authorization of the use of military force to a complete closure contradicts the reality of the facts on the ground. Al Qaeda will be with us for a long time.”

“The President’s speech today will be viewed by terrorists as a victory,” Chambliss declared.

Graham took the chance to ding the president on Iraq: “Iraq is a country that went through hell, was inside the 10-yard line, the surge did work and it’s falling apart because the president chose not to leave any American soldiers behind when 10,000 or 12,000 would have made a difference.”

Leaving aside why Graham thinks 10,000 or 12,000 U.S. troops would have made a difference in Iraq when over 100,000 couldn’t stop it from descending into civil war in 2006 (not to mention the tension between claiming to support democracy in Iraq while bashing the president for not working harder to circumvent democracy in Iraq in order to keep U.S. troops there), it’s remarkable that these Congressional leaders essentially want America to keep playing into Al Qaeda’s “bleed until bankruptcy” strategy.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law (Photo: AP)

Abu Ghaith was taken into custody in Jordan, then transferred to the custody of the CIA and FBI under the extradition treaty between the two countries. Abu Gaith served as a spokesman for the core Al Qaeda group that planned the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Shortly after that attack, Abu Ghaith issued a video address to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which he warned that “the storms shall not stop, especially the Airplanes Storm,” and advised Muslims, children, and opponents of the United States “not to board any aircraft and not to live in high rises.”

Rather than being transferred to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Ghaith has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Southern New York on charges of conspiracy to kill United States nationals. That step has already been criticized by several Republicans who are in favor of Guantanamo remaining open, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “We believe the administration’s decision here to bring this person to New York City, if that’s what’s happened, without letting Congress know is a very bad precedent to set,” Graham said in a press conference with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH).

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also agreed that Abu Ghaith should be sent to Guantanamo rather than brought to the U.S. for trial. Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera, however, this morning defended the decision to bring Abu Ghaith to New York, citing the much higher conviction rate seen in federal courts:

RIVERA: We have convicted 67 of these terrorist in our federal courts. We have only convicted seven in the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay. 67 in Federal Court. Just seven in the military tribunals. This is exactly the venue where he should be tried and convicted.

Watch Rivera’s defense here:

Civilian courts have also proved in the past to be better at gaining usable information from suspected terrorists than their military counterparts. This fact hasn’t stopped the outrage from pouring forward from conservatives whenever a civilian court is utilized to try suspected terrorists.

It’s that outrage that allows Abu Ghaith to be the highest-level Al Qaeda official tried in civilian courts. The last attempt to have a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda tried — Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind behind September 11th — was virulently opposed by Republicans, such as Sarah Palin and Rep. Steve King (R-IA). The outcry that sprung up around that trial forced the Department of Justice to drop their move, resulting in Sheik Mohammad’s trial to be moved to military tribunal.

Under a new military doctrine, Pakistan has now officially recognized that “homegrown militancy” is the top threat that the country faces, replacing neighboring India for the first time.

For decades, it has been an unofficial policy of Pakistan to cultivate ties with militant groups for use as proxies in battles against external enemies. These groups could be used in either direction across Pakistan’s border, to the west towards Afghanistan or to the east towards India. Among these, the Haqqani Network remains the perpetrator of some of the most deadliest attacks within Afghanistan, with Pakistan viewing the organization as a hedge towards retaining influence in the state as the United States prepares for a drawdown and eventual exit.

Likewise, the deadly coordinated Mumbai attacks of 2008, in which gunmen killed over 164 in a single day in India’s largest city, was conducted by terrorists on the order of and with assistance from Pakistan. In recent years, however, Pakistan has found itself plagued by similar terrorist organizations, including the Pakistani Taliban, which is recently responsible for shooting a young girl named Malala Yousafzai. For the Pakistani Army — which often exercises control of the state either through periodic coups or the so-called “deep state” — to label militants as the primary threat that the state faces is a momentous shift.

Despite this, the army attempted to play down the importance of the change in policy:

“Army prepares for all forms of threats. Sub-conventional threat is a reality and is a part of a threat matrix faced by our country. But it doesn’t mean that the conventional threat has receded,” Maj-Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) told The Express Tribune.

According to the BBC, the new Army Doctrine talks about unidentified militant groups and their role to create unrest in the country. It also mentions that Pakistani militants have found refuge across the Durand Line in Afghanistan.

Since the partition of 1947, Pakistani leaders have believed that India posed the country’s greatest existential threat. The perceived threat was exacerbated by tensions over control of territory in the state of Kashmir, which was the cause of three of the four wars that the states have fought. While the new doctrine does not negate the premise that India is a threat, its downgrading could be the key to a lasting upgrade in relations between the two.

In the same way, tensions between the United States and Pakistan have often been the result of the latter’s ties to groups operating in Afghanistan from bases in Pakistan. The radio silence between the two during the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was due to the belief within the United States that someone within Pakistan’s military with ties to militants would leak details of the attack. As a result, the raid caused a deep chill in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will debate foreign policy tonight. We’ve chronicled Romney’s foreign policy positions throughout the campaign here and below are five facts we think you should have on hand during tonight’s third and final presidential debate:

1. New reporting finds that protest against anti-Islam video played role in Benghazi attacks. Facts have been lost in the Republicans’ scramble to politicize the attacks in Libya last month that killed three Americans. It turns out that, according to the latest reports, there’s “no evidence” that the attack was ordered by al Qaeda and the attack grew out of a protest against a video disparaging the Prophet Mohammed.

2. Romney harshly criticized Obama’s pledge to send U.S. troops into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. In 2007, Romney attacked Obama for saying he’d order U.S. forces into Pakistan to kill or capture bin Laden, just like he did in May, 2011. “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours,” Romney said in 2007. The former Massachusetts governor also said in 2007 referring to bin Laden: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

3. Iran is not enriching weapons-grade uranium. Iran is currently enriching low-grade uranium (against the demands of the United Nations), but Israeli and U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency all agree that Iran has yet to decide on whether to build nuclear weapons and enrich to the high grade needed for bomb. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the U.S. and the international community would know if Iran makes that decision and that it would take “a little more than a year” to construct a nuclear device.

4. Romney will increase military spending by $2.1 trillion, with no plan to pay for it. Romney plans on increasing military spending by $2.1 trillion. One adviser repeatedly dodged questions on how Romney plans to pay for it while another said that Romney would maintain war spending indefinitely to make up the cost. CAP has charted the numbers:

5. Israeli leaders have praised Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security: “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “I think under President Obama we have the best relationship on the issue of security. Never were the security [...] needs better met than today under president Obama,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Mitt Romney campaign co-chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu accused President Obama of waiting too long to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday.

Sununu said that Obama was “timid,” could have gone after the terrorist mastermind sooner, and attributed the successful operation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing. [...] His trying to take credit for having been decisive belies the fact that he wasn’t decisive until pressed by others.

But former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, described Obama’s decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden “gutsy,” saying that “people don’t realize” what a tough call it was and not everyone would have made the same call. Vice President Biden and Gates both advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid, noting that “There wasn’t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.”

Indeed, even Romney had hinted that he would have not followed in Obama’s footsteps. In April of 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” but quickly changed his mind after bin Laden was killed. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” he proclaimed earlier this year.