Posted on 11/20/2003 4:06:40 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
A more diffuse, locally based movement is waging jihad against Western influence in the heart of the Muslim world [snip]
The paradox of al-Qaeda in the two years since 9/11 has been that while the efforts of U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have battered its core transnational networks, al-Qaeda as a movement or an idea — as distinct from a narrow clandestine organizational network — has actually grown. Analysts believe the international intelligence and security cooperation has severely impeded al-Qaeda's ability to conduct highly sophisticated transnational terror operations such as the attacks in New York and Washington, but that Bin Laden's movement has adapted by morphing into a far more decentralized entity relying principally on the structures and energies of pre-existing local groups ideologically in synch with al-Qaeda. The perpetrators of last Saturday's Istanbul synagogue bombings, for example, are Turkish Islamists associated with al-Qaeda linked groups operating inside Turkey. Similarly, attacks in Riyadh and Indonesia have been carried out by members of local Islamist organizations with links to al-Qaeda. The very term "al-Qaeda" now doesn't necessarily have the same implication as it did on 9/11, when attacks carried out on U.S. soil by foreign terrorists were micromanaged by a senior operational echelon in Afghanistan and other remote locations. While that capacity certainly still exists, the bulk of the attacks being carried out now in al-Qaeda's name are the work of localized network following general "fire-at-will" orders and picking targets of opportunity. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
With the murder of Muslim Arab children in Riyadh, Turks and Jews in Istanbul and of Italian carabinieri in Nassiriya, Al Qaeda has once again demonstrated its major strategic error, one any successful military strategist from the time of Hannibal to the present has avoided: Do not make new enemies faster than you are prepared to cope with them. It was Hitler’s error in attacking Stalin before finishing off Churchill, with well-known results.
I think the punch line was: "I swear I never knew that turkeys couldn't fly"
sorry ...my bad
.
”As God is my witness, I thought Turkeys could fly.” Is the actual quote. On such a sad day it is perhaps fitting to add some humor.
Prayers for the injured, and the dead, and, their families.
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