The Kingpin Problem
Killing terrorist leaders gets attention, but it doesn’t stop terrorism.
Updated at 8:30 a.m.
For nearly two decades, American leaders have stressed the need to address the root causes of terrorism. More often, though, they focus on something else: killing terrorists.
Donald Trump did so with particular relish when he announced yesterday morning that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s leader and the world’s most wanted terrorist, had died “whimpering and crying and screaming” in a special-operations raid over the weekend. The president, who in part on “bombing the hell” out of ISIS, has been quicker than his predecessors to define victory in military terms. In March, after the fall of the Islamic State’s last
