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" Before the ink could dry, it seemed like the secret war had already begun. Just a couple of toner cartridges haplessly headed for American synagogues, and suddenly the headlines are shouting it: TIME TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT YEMEN and OUR INVOLVEMENT IS GOING TO HAVE TO BE LONG-TERM. I suppose that&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s come to in this country these days \u2014 that, as soon as an obscure Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen claims responsibility for some UPS packages in Chicago, Americans assume we have another all-encompassing, mega-expensive affair on our not-so-bloody hands. Because when it comes to nation-building, the United States doesn&amp;#039;t do anything small and beautiful anymore. But with word coming from inside the Obama administration this week that an organized cluster of intelligence operatives from the CIA and elsewhere were &amp;quot;working fast to address... a window of vulnerability,&amp;quot; well, that&amp;#039;s got to get you thinking: With Afghanistan and the winding-down Iraq war keeping our forces at near full capacity, America&amp;#039;s experiment in the world&amp;#039;s most dangerous country is necessarily an experiment in light-footprint warfare, and it could prove to be our Whack-A-Mole strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda in the decades to come. As long as we don&amp;#039;t bring the hammer down too hard. Trouble is, the Al Qaeda chapter in Yemen is getting smarter, making up for its mistakes in Iraq and staying close to the little people \u2014 most of whom, when asked, deny that there&amp;#039;s any militant operation in their midst. Chairman Mao would be very impressed. Which leaves us at the usual crossroads: &amp;quot;Should I stay [light] or should I go [long] now?&amp;quot;  One school of thought says we should simply turn over the Special Operations high-value-target hunters to the CIA and be done with it. But the deal that&amp;#039;s been worked out with Yemen&amp;#039;s central government, such as it is, involves U.S. advisors very quietly helping Yemeni forces establish small-but-long-term mini-bases in the southern hinterlands where Al Qaeda is concentrated. Which doesn&amp;#039;t mean our best-and-baddest won&amp;#039;t do some hunting on the side. It just means we&amp;#039;re witnessing the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Again. Like Afghanistan, there&amp;#039;s no good logic in leaving the place a mess once you&amp;#039;re in and committed. But our history of limited-regret, kinetic-heavy operations is bleak: you kill the bad guys as they pop up, then you piss off the collateral damage \u2014 as in, the locals. And once that gets out of hand, the bad guys move one apartment next-door and start all over again. You&amp;#039;re the exterminator nobody likes, and nothing ever seems to get fixed.  Now this strategy \u2014 jumping out of one frying pan (once we&amp;#039;ve made it hot enough) and into whatever neighboring fire has the biggest flame of ongoing local discontent \u2014 has been Al Qaeda&amp;#039;s logic for two decades and counting. But the key to doing this sort of targeted hellhole-solving is to incentivize the local partnerships. In Afghanistan, we seem content to limit ourselves to the duplicitous Pakistanis, but Yemen has the Saudis \u2014 and the Saudis have cash. Between them and the Gulf emirates, that&amp;#039;s a lot of local wealthy friends with a lot at stake (read: vulnerable minority populations). So this could kind of be the ultimate proving ground for a well-networked combo of nation-building and firepower. Will it be enough? Maybe. Yemen is a very poor place with a truly dysfunctional government, but America is a very indebted place with a truly dysfunctional government, so for now we&amp;#039;ll take a pass on any serious nation-building effort. Yes, whack-a-mole strikes usually succeed best in enraging the local population, but that will have to suffice until Al Qaeda scores a bigger hit on America. What with the other two war fronts dialing down at different and confusing speeds, our threshold for pain is unusually high. So look for the sort of regionalized security response here that Team Obama has yet to muster \u2014 much less master \u2014 in Afghanistan.  Here&amp;#039;s hoping we&amp;#039;re not too American to screw it up. Esquire contributing editor Thomas P.M. Barnett is the author of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush. EARLIER: How Yemeni Terrorists Almost Bombed My Synagogue &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8962/american-al-qaeda-yemen-111810/>