Assassins

David Ignatius writes in this morning's WaPo:

The shame for America isn't that we have tried to topple the rule of the assassins but that we have so far been unsuccessful. We thought we were cracking the old web of terror when America invaded Iraq in 2003, but it's still there, in the shadows of the shadows. George W. Bush gets a lot of things wrong, but he knows that he's fighting the assassins. On days like these, I'm glad that he is such a stubborn man. . . .

Amid the Bush administration's mistakes and lies about Iraq over the past three years, it's easy to lose sight of what is at stake in this battle. But this week brings it back to square one: It's about breaking the power of the assassins.

I tend to agree, but isn't assassination a crime of stealth? And if it's a crime of stealth, doesn't it need to be fought with stealth? Our stealth fighters are special forces and the CIA, yet the latter's funding was crushed during the 1990s and today we want to tie its hands.