This appears to me to be the most significant statement for the USA. It is failure that has them rethinking their current strategy. The proper way to think about his article is "Since this strategy is losing the people, then we declare this strategy to be wrong."
No one is saying that the act of murdering innocent civilians is wrong. The difference between a soldier and a terrorist is that the terrorist intentionally targets innocents as part of his strategy. A soldier targets the enemy's military and military capabilities.
If al Queda could manage to kill only non-Muslim innocent civilians they would still have the vast majority of Muslims on their side. However, terrorist bombings don't discriminate, and a whole lot more of the innocent faithful have been killed compared to the number of dead kuffirs. IOW, it's morally just fine until ordinary Muslims start getting killed by their 'heros'.
In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank. Following a wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the past year, support for suicide operations amongst Pakistanis has dropped to 9 percent (it was 33 percent five years ago),