Feb 27 2008
Interesting View Of al-Qaeda’s Dwindling Capability
I you want to see how the War On Terror as succeeded in decimating al-Qaeda, and how the movement has moved from the Middle East to Europe due to the decimation check out this assessment:
The third wave of terrorists comprises mostly “terrorist wannabes,” said Marc Sageman, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, who was a CIA case officer in Afghanistan in the 1980s. They are a post-Iraq terrorist generation made up predominately of Muslims in Europe who feel shut out of the labor market, said Sageman, speaking in Washington on Feb. 20 at an event sponsored by the New America Foundation.
…
Sageman said the first wave of terrorists were early companions of Osama bin Laden, who went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight Soviet invaders. Called Afghan Arabs, most being Egyptian, they are the surviving leaders of al Qaeda. Bin Laden only trusts and has contact with this hard-core group of original al Qaeda members. The second wave joined al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, he said, and is made up mostly of disenfranchised Muslims from Europe. Both groups, which number around 2,000, remain isolated and hidden in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
The third wave sprung up organically, linking virtually with other networks, but because of the war on terror they have been unable to travel to this region for al Qaeda training and resources. Far more terrorist plots originate with this latest wave, Sageman said, but generally, they are poorly planned and the terrorists usually are arrested before they carry out an attack.
We have not won the war yet. We still need to destroy the remaining remnants of the hard core members now congregating in the tribal areas of Pakistan. But the trend is in the positive direction.
al-Qaeda has been on a killing spree of late, trying to demonstrate their viability by massacring Muslims by the droves. But all this does is expand the backlash in the Muslim community to al-Qaeda and drive them towards aligning with America and the West. There are still dangerous forces out there trying to leverage and/or replace al-Qaeda as the preeminent threat to Western civilization. There are indications Iran – which is a Persian society with centuries old conflicts with its Arab neighbors – is the emerging killer of Arab Muslim in Iraq:
“We have information confirming that Iranian secret services have sent agents to sabotage the Sahwa experience in Iraq,” the statement said, referring to mostly Sunni groups fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq alongside the US military.
Persians aligning with al-Qaeda in killing Arab Muslims is only going to increase the backlash against al-Qaeda. So all indications, and a majority of the actions by al-Qaeda and other enemies of America, is that the path of these terrorist thugs is still towards self destruction. As I said, we have not won yet but we are the path to victory – as long as we don’t quit and run away. And why would we after coming this far and sacrificing so much? To simply appease some folks with stage four Bush Derangement Syndrome?
MSNBC News Services
updated 2 hours, 10 minutes ago
DUBAI – In a video posted on the Internet on Wednesday, al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, purportedly vowed revenge for the killing of a top group commander in a suspected U.S. attack in Pakistan.
“No chief of ours had died of a natural death, nor has our blood been spilled without a response,†Zawahri said in the video posted on an Islamist Web site, referring to the killing of Abu Laith al-Libi.
Libi, considered as one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants in Afghanistan, was killed in an suspected U.S. missile strike that killed up to 13 foreign militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan border area in late January.
WE’re killing all their first,second,and third string players.You know the game’s going bad when you’re down to your punter playing QB in the second half.
“We have not won the war yet.”
To say the war is almost over is to completely miss what the war is. We have done nothing to dissuade Muslims from believing in the doctrine of Jihad. Islam is on the march around the world. There is huge momentum behind it… The Muslim view of this activity is that they well on their way to achieving what Allah has promised… global rule.
We may not see a lot of violence right now… but that’s only because most Muslims understand the rules of war requires that only a legitimate pure Islamic State (Caliphate) can declare Jihad. Groups like Al Qaeda do not have the legal legitimacy to declare a jihad.
Once a Caliphate is recognized, the Caliph of the future will declare jihad.. and all these Muslim communities all around the world will be the launching point for the sacking of every city they are in.
Every day we allow the Muslim population to increase, we are losing.
Vince is right that the GWOT is much bigger than al-Qaeda, but then goes well over the top by equating all muslims with the radical jihadist element.
The GWOT is a decades long war– a clash of violent, tyrannical islamisists against western secularism. The Iraq War is simply a battle in this GWOT, albeit the central and most important one. The decison to take out Saddam (he helped us decide) and instill a friendly, pluralistic (quasi democracy) govt essentially accelerated this war. (Similar to how the primary season this year was accelerated with the earlier primaries and especially super Tuesday.) What would have been a slower evolving and escalating war was suddenly compressed. Victory in Iraq — and we’re on the way, so long as we don’t lose our nerve, and elect a liberal — will make it likely that the west will prevail and do so sooner than later. But don’t fool yourself, this war will be fought for a l-o-n-g time and it must be fought. Although al-Qaeda is a spent force, the radical jihadist movement lives on in almost all corners of the globe. With the incubators (called madrasas) in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Indonesia and even in Londonistan and other European cities and Africa (& probably a few here, too), there will be eager reinforcements to keep waging their jihad.
We may not know the lasting ramifications of the Iraq War on the ME and world events for 10, 15 years or more. Which is why it is so maddening to hear all the pundits and other “experts” calling the war a failure or a bad decision when the war is still going on! Yes, things looked gloomy a couple years ago, but almost everyone was taking a short-sighted view. Now that the surge has worked, and political progress is being made, it would be a historical travesty with horrible consequences if we retreat for defeat. Not only will it rejuvenate a badly beaten enemy, it would also demoralize (despite the nonsensical talk from the dems about our reputation) our western allies who now depend on us to defend them and fight their battles. You think times are gloomy now? Watch the economy in 5, 10, 15 years if we pull out of Iraq precipitously. See how peacefull the world will be.
Think we got somebody this morning,
mysterious missile strike in Pakistan, something to do with a seminary, not much news yet.
AJ will ferret it out!
Ah, yes, more feel-good bilge re: Iraq.
In spite of the fact that the Sunnis are withdrawing from cooperation with US troops, the Turks are de-stabilizing Iraqi/Kurdistan and the Shia are ready to rumble at the drop of a hat.
More troubling, however, is the latest computations from Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s new assessment of just how much George’s Bush’s ill-advised vanity war is costing America:
$3 Trillion. That’s $3,000,000,000,000.00 . . . and climbing:
blockquote>The figure of $3 trillion includes what it will cost to pay death benefits, and to care for some of the worst-injured soldiers that army surgeons have ever seen, for the next 50 years.
By way of context, Stiglitz list what even one of these trillions could have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America’s social security problem for half a century.
Bush has committed each of us – every American – to $10,000.00 worth of debt to finance his stupid and disastrous foreign policy . . . and the Republican candidate for president – who graduated 5th from the bottom of his class at Annapolis and lost 5 (count ’em 5!) taxpayer paid for airplanes – three of those by self-induced crashes -doesn’t care if we have troops in Iraq for 1,000 years.
That’s a catchy slogan if I’ve ever heard one: 1,000 years of War!!!!!
I am placing a bet that I have lived under more Presidents than Sooth. I am really going to miss President George W Bush. To date, he is by far my favorite, coming in right behind Reagan.
BDS was created by the Dems by their very own MSM. It is a war that rages in every area. Most will not give them the credit they deserve. Look at the war in Iraq and contrast that with Kosovo in any area you like. The MSM damn near lost this war for us. They create their own facts. Plamegate was a criminal act by the MSM.
O’Reilly has finally got something right, recognized the true extent of their power and is waging a war against it. He is the ONLY one on the tube with the guts to call names. He is slightly ‘off’ on many of his tirades……….example………he waged war against bad Judges when it should have been the DA’s. The DA usually has the most power. It is like the MSM in that it also has the power of Silence.
I just watched a Presidential news conference. They still ask the same stupid questions, giving their same answers to their own questions as FACT. MSM will never give Iraq war truth. They wrote this book.
How much you want to bet Owl??
I was born when Truman was president (1st term) and there is no doubt in my mind that the lickspittle clown currently befouling the Oval Office is the Worst President in US History. And I’ll bet $1,000.00 history will so judge him within 10 years.
I grew up a Republican. My aunt was a Willkie delegate in 1940, and we all liked Ike. The Republican Party wouldn’t even allow Eisenhower to be a member now, as he was far too moderate fro the Christian right and the Hannity/O’REilly axis of ignorance. You guys would have Swift-boated Ike because he didn’t see enough combat in WWII.
When the Republican Party became the home of arrogant sociopaths like Richard Nixon, I split and have never looked back.
People like soothsayer make me laugh.
Everything is viewed in his bigoted political worldview.. The evil Republicans/Christians are the blame for Jihad.
If you think that.. you’re stupid. Or a liar. Period
And as far as Debt goes…. the debt is way higher than $3T
It’s about $50T if you include the Social Security “trust fund” IOUs that the Democrats spent 40 years spending.
So dont give us your BS that you care about Debt. You care about nothing other than identifying a problem you have no intention on fixing and blaming it on Republicans.
That’s it. That’s your craven motivation.
Don’t be too mad at Soothie, he’s stilling dealing with the fact that Obama has promised to save his soul, one he never knew he had until Obama told him about it! No wonder he’s conflicted. At least thanks to Obama he’s now proud of this country for the very first time in his life. (or does Obama have to win for that to happen?)
If only I had a dollar for every democrat who told me history would judge Bush as one of our worst presidents ever. Not surprisingly, it’s the same liberal friends of mine who said the very same thing about Reagan. They didn’t pay up then, either.