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Getting boots to the right place is easier said than done. For one thing, such an operation doesn't play to the strengths of the U.S. military; 12 years ago, it took 24,000 troops 14 days to find Manuel Noriega in the relatively benign environment of Panama. "We're good at hitting big, immovable things," says an Air Force general. "We don't do so well when they move around and they're small." Both are true of bin Laden. "He is the hardest man ever to get to," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. To avoid being spotted by satellites, bin Laden and his associates use human couriers to relay messages, who sometimes travel on foot rather than in cars. He has been extra careful since Chechen secessionist leader Dzhokar Dudayev was blown up by a Russian rocket while using a satellite phone. Though the CIA has often been criticized for its failure to infiltrate Islamic fundamentalist groups, Ranstorp is more forgiving. "The U.S. has expended as much energy and time as it feasibly could to get close to bin Laden. But he's very well versed in counterintelligence and in how to protect himself."
And even if the special forces get to him, what then? This isn't a case, in the sort of language loved by military folks, in which you just cut off the head of the snake and let the body wither. "Terrorism is not bin Laden," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "He's got lieutenants waiting to succeed him." The cellular, secretive structure of al-Qaeda--small groups of operatives acting almost independently--militates against a quick, decisive strike. Says Ranstorp: "Al-Qaeda is truly a multinational enterprise; they have made it into a decentralized organization that understands the power of asymmetric warfare in overcoming superpower supremacy."
The international nature of al-Qaeda makes the task of defeating it that much harder. There are thought to be sympathizers and operatives in dozens of countries, all sharing a messianic vision of an Islamic holy war and posing new challenges to the forces of counterterrorism. Many of bin Laden's foot soldiers have combat and logistical experience gained in the Afghan war of 1979-89; indeed, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan turns out to have been one of those events that unexpectedly changes the world. It hastened the demise of the Soviet Union, as poorly trained young Soviet troops got massacred in hostile terrain. It convinced American policymakers, who supported the Afghan resistance, that the U.S. could wage war by proxy, spending treasure but no American blood. And most important, it armed and radicalized a generation of extremists--bin Laden among them--who flocked to Afghanistan from all over the world and who now assist radical Islamic groups from Chechnya to the Philippines and figure out how to crash planes into skyscrapers.