One of the junior analysts over at the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a blog posting about the ineffectiveness of drone strikes on Al Qaeda leadership.  After discussing the killing of a senior Al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan, he goes  on to lament the failure of drone strikes to win the War on Terrorism:

Despite these pronouncements of impending victory, U.S. counterterrorism strategy is inherently flawed.  The U.S. relies on a tactic known as decapitation, which states that eliminating the leaders of an organization will lead to its destruction.

I would submit that the Pentagon or White House can claim victory in any winning engagement with the enemy, no matter how small.  Winning a battle and winning a war are two different things.  Furthermore, decapitation is not the strategy, it is a tactic, one of many being used in the Global War on Terror (GWT).  The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for 15 years to eliminate a hostile regime and build the successor state’s capabilities to the point that the state is able to exert sovereignty over its territory. (Sovereignty defined in the Weberian sense of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.)

Decapitation is used to disrupt the opposing organization.  It will never lead to the destruction of a decentralized and franchised organization like Al Qaeda.  The temporary disruption caused by drone strikes should not be disparaged, because it fails to win a war singlehandedly.

The GWT is a civilizational conflict that will be generations long.  The defeat of violent salafi groups is not achievable with military methods alone.  Drone strikes are one of many ways to temporarily keep the wolves at bay.  Building the capabilities of states to police their own jihadis is an important tool in the longer term strategy.