The upcoming trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed should be used to redefine the War on Terror as being about bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

The Washington Post recently reported that al Qaeda Grand Poohbah, Osama bin Laden, has endorsed the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound jet:

"The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the Sept. 11," he said of the Nigerian suspect in the Dec. 25 botched attack.

"If our messages had been able to reach you through words we wouldn't have been delivering them through planes."

Directing his statements at President Barack Obama - "from Osama to Obama," he said - bin Laden added: "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine."

While bin Laden would seemingly make a perfect Bond villain, this is a non-story.  Links between the Pakistan-Afghanistan al Qaeda and copycat groups in Iraq, North Africa, and the Arabian peninsula are tenuous at best.  While bin Laden claims the underpants bomber was retaliation for American support for Israel, just four weeks ago, Yemen al Qaeda claimed Abdulmutallab was a response to U.S. intelligence support for the Yemeni regime's own attacks on Yemen al Qaeda strongholds.  Bin Laden's most recent recording, like so many before, is an attempt to capitalize on the media spotlight as a recruitment platform. 

Time and time again we've played directly into his hand.  Terrorist cells rely on deception, misdirection, and malleability to function properly.  The immense power of the U.S. army is rendered moot when we don't know where or who our enemy is.  To avoid situations where a bunch of guys look and some others stand around with guns in case something happens, it's necessary to associate criminals with nation states, something the U.S. did explicitly when it declared war on Afghanistan's Taliban government (which was guilty of allowing al Qaeda to operate within its borders) and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq (which was unaware of the 9/11 plot, but rushed to express support after the fact).  If the goal was the destruction of those regimes, we have succeeded admirably in Iraq, and are having a tough time of it in Afghanistan, but who knows how many future bin Ladens we've created in the process?

The concept of nation states is something unfamiliar to most residents of what we call Afghanistan, a region far more rooted and clannish than an America of wanderers and the mixed-blood descendents of immigrants.  These people see only invading forces spread throughout the Middle East from the Arabian peninsula to Afghanistan.  The only commonality of the places they occupy is Islam.  Only five men had full knowledge of the 9/11 attacks before they happened, and only nineteen participated.  Waging war indiscriminately against arbitrarily defined nation states with the most tenuous of tenuous links to 9/11 makes it look like we're waging war against Islam, which gives bin Laden's populist rhetoric a receptive audience. 

It's clear that bin Laden is the endgame, but the longer we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more we sacrifice in order to win; in the meantime, there are several things we can do to hedge against inevitable blowback at larger scales than that in response to our Cold War policies (9/11).  The first thing we can do is clarify our objectives: in Iraq, we should have no further hostilities and try to shore-up our image as best as we can after destroying the place; in Afghanistan, we should shift the focus to finding bin Laden and work with elements of the Taliban if we have to or do so through Pakistan.  We should finally rebuild on ground zero; the recent announcement that the recession may delay construction until 2030 should be met with disgust - we should use stimulus money if we have to - looking pathetic is even worse for our image than looking beligerent. 

Finally, we should emphasize how big the capture and impending trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed really is.  Most Americans consider KSM to be a lieutenant of bin Laden.  In actuality, KSM was the architect of 9/11, and only ran it by bin Laden afterwards.  Bin Laden used it as a recruitment opportunity.  The trial of KSM, as yet unannounced, could serve as a justifyable pretext for a policy about-face.  America and the world has grown tired of objectiveless warfare and increased security everywhere.  Unless we change our image quickly from aggressor back to victim, it will never stop.