Posted on 05/18/2007 1:06:31 PM PDT by P-40
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter050707_qaeda.rm
Woodrow Wilson Center Speech on "Understanding Al Qaeda"
Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow and former NSC Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs, gives a speech on "Understanding Al Qaeda" at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
5/7/2007: WASHINGTON, DC:
Right about now, after this Immigration mess, we need a conference on “Understanding Republicans.”
I’d certainly want to attend such a conference...if it is in English. My Spanish is a bit rusty.
“Understanding al-Qaeda”
Convert, submit or die.
Al-Qaeda is not so much interested in conversions. Thus it becomes, submit or die.
And if you develop a little backbone after you have once submitted, and begin to resist, just die.
Since the price is going to be the same, do the right thing at the start. Kill the Islamic jihadist first. Don’t even bother to go through all this “understanding” crap.
Listened half-way through.
Here are some of the major problems with the hosts.
1. Discuss the establishment of Al Queda - as if “Al Queda” is the origins of Islamic terrorism; it’s not.
2.Discuss the “cells” and “franchises” of Al Queda as if our recent awareness of their breadth across the world equals a time-frame of their “creation”, which it does not.
3. Constantly use the frames established by the language of the terrorists as if they speak some intrinsic truth about their abilities, instead of understanding they are hoping the ignorant and the media will push those lines of thought in the west - they are counting on the west’s to fail to understand the mis-information, disinformation and propaganda effort in those statements.
3. The posit the “why ‘Al Queda’ resurgent - not defeated in Afghanistan by wrongly equate “numbers of forces on the ground” of greater importance than intelligence needed to direct those forces and the reliability of local intelligence, which the western coalition partners are dependent on.
4. They do get right the lack of absolute co-operation by the Pakistani government in tackling the local Pakistani-Taliban-Al Queda links, the historical genesis of that and the relationship of that issue to the Kashmir issue.
5. They pretend that the disposition, by Muslim immigrants in Europe, to join terrorist networks is something new, instead of recognizing that disposition has been there for a long, long time and is simply only now coming to surface in violent actions.
6. They pretend that Osama’s brief against the Saudi royals is something new (an Osama speech in 2003) instead of recognizing that the only thing that changed - attacking the Saudi royals directly - is that the speech reflected only one thing new - now it is time.
7. They pretend that new Al Queda “cells” in Saudi Arabia is new, instead of understanding, as per # 6 above, the cells were always there, always in the shared philosophy with Osama, just biding their time.
8. They pretend that Zarqawi’s network and its extent is new, instead of realizing all that is new is western intelligence recognition of that extent.
9. They ignore the tiny minority that the Al Queda represents in Iraq and the extent to which numerous respected local Sunni tribal leaders are actively working, militarily against Al Queda independently and in co-operation with the coalition supporting the Iraqi government; and thereby magnify, in error, the ability of Al Queda to be a popular movement in Iraq.
10. They take Al Queda leaders’ statements at their word constantly, instead of understanding Al Queda’s astute use of the world media as diseminators of their propaganda - even while they do recognize that Al Queda’s leaders are very astute and sophisticated in their communications efforts.
11. They makes reference to “the heart of the ‘Al Queda’ movement” yet, does so with total failure to understand that that “heart” is not in the “organizational structure” of ‘Al Queda’, but in the Islamic fundamentalist, fascist philosophy behind, and for the purposes of, the creation of ‘Al Queda’. There was always going to be an “Al Queda” expression of that movement and Osama is not the creator of that expression but the designated tool of the movement in forming that expression. If Osama had never existed, and if he were to die tomorrow, someone else would have, someone else would build and create “Al Queda” movements, to, fulfill the military wing of a worldwide Islamic fundamentalist, fascist movement that operates in every public, political and social medium and venue - not just through “terrorism”.
12. Worst of all, they accept the propaganda of Al Queda and the Muslim brotherhood that they oppose each other because Al Queda is violent and the brotherhood “rejects” violence; instead of understanding that that is a fiction and is no more than the separation of roles so that some may become fifth columns in the societies of the Middle East and now in the west, while others take up the sword, but both roles operate as part of the same agenda.
13. They magnify the importance of Osama. He is totally replaceable and will be replaced faster than we can identify that he is dead. “Al Queda” is part of a movement as vast and multifaceted as was international communism and the Soviet empire; and the Commintern never failed because a “leader” of their movement died. Just like international communism and the Soviet Union, the “movement” from which Osama was spawned raises up its Osamas as needed, and will continue to do so.
By failing to understand the extent of the core Islamic philosophy the hosts - mostly from a bunch of liberal think tanks - wrongly focus on the operational aspects of “Al Queda” as if those aspects are the “heart” of the issue - they’re not, they are only the most observable aspects - and to the exclusion of the creation of the cannon fodder of young Muslim men willing to become jihadists, which is occurring “peacefully” throughout the Middle East, in every Middle East country and predominately in Sunni Muslim countries and predominately where Saudi Wahabi clerics have huge Saudi financial support in building and running fundamentalist Wahabi mosques and schools.
The hosts really don’t get it and did not provide a supremely well-informed and in-depth portrait of “understanding Al Queda”. They represent the same liberal “experts” that failed us in the 1990s and they have learned nothing since.
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