Finishing up hiking in Tasmania–and the London bomb plot and the Aussie connections are still all over the airwaves, as is the Pakistani mosque standoff. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi give an excellent tour d’horizon of the new generation of al-Qaeda leaders and offshoots and argues that they may be learning from the mistakes of their predecessors and may become an even more formidable adversary. They conclude:

In order to counter Al-Qaeda’s new generation, Western officials should concentrate on twin goals. First, they should prevent terrorist safe havens from arising in the first place—a goal that was endorsed by the 9-11 Commission. And, second, they need to prove that U.S. allies and their aid organizations are as adept at building a stable civil society as the jihadists.

How disheartening it is, then, that so many senators of both parties seek to pullback, cede Iraq, and write it off as a new safe-haven. And how disappointing that their is no real debate how to transform USAID and its offshoots from a cumbersome bureaucracy into something lean, mean, and adept at fulfilling its declared mission, this as Timothy Carney, Rice’s special envoy for reconstruction quietly returns home.