Al Qaeda Adapts

Al Qaeda continues to take a beating, but you can ignite a media firestorm just saying that. One of the most irritating things about the war on terror, is trying to keep score. Unlike a conventional war, where you can measure territory won and lost, as well as casualties, the current conflict does not really lend itself to those measurements. But there are things that can be measured.

Al Qaeda operations continue to decline, as the number of al Qaeda members, and leaders killed or captured, goes up. Then there's al Qaeda media activity. Up until last Fall, 93 percent of al Qaeda Internet announcements were video. Since then, most of them are just audio, and sounding increasingly less confident. There is good reason for that lack of confidence. American and Pakistani attacks (usually with missiles or smart bombs) along the Afghan border in the last two years have killed an increasing number of foreign fighters. DNA tests can tell if someone is from the region, or elsewhere in the world. But that's not what worries al Qaeda, it's the increasing amount of accurate information the counter-terror forces are getting. No one is talking, but al Qaeda chatter claims that either the Americans have some wondrous new bit of technology, or Yankee money has corrupted more al Qaeda members to give up information. The Taliban is suffering the same kind of casualties, and coming up with the same paranoid theories. More people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some of them innocent, are being accused of spying, and killed by the Taliban and al Qaeda. Some of those multi-million dollar rewards for terrorists have been collected. Some openly, some more discretely. There is some reason to be paranoid.

Al Qaeda is eagerly recruiting other Islamic terrorist organizations, usually ones that have recently taken a big beating in their home country, to become part of al Qaeda. That's about the only growth al Qaeda is experiencing. In Iraq, former Sunni Arab allies of al Qaeda have openly turned on the organization, and are eagerly hunting them down and killing them. Al Qaeda is fighting back, now sending death squads after Sunni Arab tribal chiefs. Does that sound like something a winner would be doing?

Al Qaeda is having some success in the Western media, and among Moslems living in Europe. But those expatriate Moslems are handicapped by many of their brethren who are not enthusiastic about Islamic terrorism. The police get tips, make arrests, and al Qaeda losses a few more true believers. Al Qaeda is desperate for another highly visible attack in the West. Many such operations are apparently being planned, but by amateurs who can get no help from al Qaeda experts. Most of al Qaedas traveling experts are dead or in prison. Inspiring amateurs to attempt poorly planned attacks, like the recent ones in Britain, only discourage recruits. That's because another bunch of wannabes get sent away for long prison terms. This is a fate worse than death for Islamic terrorists. There are no 72 virgins in Western prisons, unless you consider the fact that you may be turned into one.

Al Qaeda is having some success in the Western media

I would say that is an understatement.
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agree, it is an understatement.........I would add that “al qaeda” has become the principal strawman, now, for those who wish and intend to obfuscate (at ANY cost) the true and widespread nature of global jihad throughout islam, especially regarding its function in and how it affects the west.......which includes all sects of it, active and organized terrorist acts, recruitment, and indoctrination; all the small-time wildcat “homegrown” unorganized would-be and wannabe jihaddis. Also we shouldn’t forget to include the fundraising endeavors, the large amount of “moral support” within the muzzie communities worldwide, and MOST OF ALL the alleged (but absent) “moderate” muzzlims.

Global jihad has manifest itself everywhere islam is tolerated (think CHINA, which has absolutely no jihaddi problems). In every other major social issue such as crime, poverty, education, etc, the stupid lefty panderers to it always ignore the empirical fact, and want to instead “look for and find the causes”, and the deleterious social disease of the issue goes unaddressed and advances. By using al-qaeda to such a large extent as a strawman, we are committing the same mistake.

Symptomatic treatment of cancer extends the life of the victim, but does not cure it and the cancer always wins if it is not excised or otherwise cured. The number of strawman, politically correct, and foolish approaches to global jihad only mildly and temporarily alleviate the symptoms.......islam is the causative organism, and excising it from where it is manifest in the west is the only sure cure! We’d better wise up fast!

The radical loser (Long Read)
Der Spiegel ^ | 1/12/05 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694568/posts

(snip)

The radical loser has not disappeared either. He is still among us. This is inevitable. On every continent, there are leaders who welcome him with open arms. Except that today, they are very rarely associated with the state. In this field too, privatization has made considerable advances. Although it is governments which have at their disposal the greatest potential for extermination, state crime in the conventional sense is now on the defensive worldwide.

To date, few loser-collectives have operated on a global scale, even if they were able to count on international flows of cash and weapon supplies. But the world is teeming with local groupings whose leaders are referred to as warlords or guerrilla chiefs. Their self-appointed militias and paramilitary gangs like to adorn themselves with the title of a liberation organization or other revolutionary attributes. In some media, they are referred to as rebels, a euphemism that probably flatters them. Shining Path, MLC, RCD, SPLA, ELA, LTTE, LRA, FNL, IRA, LIT, KACH, DHKP, FSLN, UVF, JKLF, ELN, FARC, PLF, GSPC, MILF, NPA, PKK, MODEL, JI, NPA, AUC, CPNML, UDA, GIA, RUF, LVF, SNM, ETA, NLA, PFLP, SPM, LET, ONLF, SSDF, PIJ, JEM, SLA, ANO, SPLMA, RAF, AUM, PGA, ADF, IBDA, ULFA, PLFM, ULFBV, ISYF, LURD, KLO, UPDS, NLFT, ATTF ...

“Left” or “Right”, it makes no odds. Each of these armed rabbles calls itself an army, boasts of brigades and commandos, self-importantly issuing bureaucratic communiqués and boastful claims of responsibility, acting as if they were the representatives of “the masses”. Being convinced, as radical losers, of the worthlessness of their own lives, they do not care about the lives of anyone else either; any concern for survival is foreign to them. And this applies equally to their opponents, to their own followers, and to those with no involvement whatsoever. They have a penchant for kidnapping and murdering people who are trying to relieve the misery of the region they are terrorizing, shooting aid workers and doctors and burning down every last hospital in the area with a bed or a scalpel – for they have trouble distinguishing between mutilation and self-mutilation.

(snip)

There is also no mistaking other similarities, such as the fixation with written authorities. The place of Marx and Lenin is taken by the Koran, references are made not to Gramsci but to Sayyid Qutb. Instead of the international proletariat, it takes as its revolutionary subject the Umma, and as its avant-garde and self-appointed representative of the masses it takes not The Party but the widely branching conspiratorial network of Islamist fighters. Although the movement can draw on older rhetorical forms which to outsiders may sound high-flown or big-mouthed, it owes many of its idées fixes to its Communist enemy: history obeys rigid laws, victory is inevitable, deviationists and traitors are to be exposed and then, in fine Leninist tradition, bombarded with ritual insults.

The movement’s list of favourite foes is also short on surprises: America, the decadent West, international capital, Zionism. The list is completed by the unbelievers, that is to say the remaining 5.2 billion people on the planet. Not forgetting apostate Muslims who may be found among the Shiites, Ibadhis, Alawites, Zaidites, Ahmadiyyas, Wahhabis, Druze, Sufis, Kharijites, Ishmaelites or other religious communities.

(snip)

Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of “collateral damage”. In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.

The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
(snip)

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