Entries Tagged 'terrorism' ↓

Nibras Kazimi examines the implications of our failing to claim victory in Iraq:

Senator Obama has some explaining to do: what does he mean by saying that he would end the war in Iraq? Whereas some aspects of the war seem to indicate that America is at war with itself as the Iraq debate rages in a charged partisan atmosphere, yet it is often the case that wars usually involve more than one side. So who is America at war with in Iraq? And is the enemy willing to end the war, and under what conditions?

Then there is another existential conundrum that Mr. Obama needs to contend with: how does one go about ending a war that, for all intents and purposes, is already over.

I hear my readers screaming: Whaddaya mean the war is over? Let Kazimi explain [e.a.]:

[The jihadists] thought they were building an empire in Iraq, the caliphate that Mr. bin Laden was always harping on about but never got the nerve to attempt. It was to be the realization of their dream, the same vision for which they launched the September 11, 2001, attacks and the mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq.

And now that they have been defeated in Iraq — anyone saying otherwise is either clueless or being purposely mendacious — America has in fact achieved something far greater than a military victory: America’s soldiers have smashed the nascent state of the caliphate; the dream is no more. This is a fate far worse than death for the jihadists, who enthusiastically embrace dying for their cause of resurrecting an Islamic empire as a noble act of martyrdom. Should Mr. bin Laden be killed or captured, then he would remain an undiminished hero in their eyes; while Americans may think that this would count as victory, the jihadists may simply shrug it off. However, seeing their state collapse in Iraq is their own nadir of demoralization and ideological defeat.

Kazimi also explains the ramifications of failing to declare defeat of the enemy [e.a.]:

The enemy has been defeated before it and its aims have been defined; now that’s quite an auspicious outcome. But it is also a dangerous one, since important lessons need to be learned before the enemy regroups and reengages on newer fronts.

The new fronts will be in Europe, Kazimi says. How does he know? Well, he reads the enemy’s writings. What a concept!

Read the whole thing.

And remember that the brilliant and persistent professor-blogger Engram has reached the same conclusion (via different means)—that the enemy [al Qaeda] has been defeated in Iraq.

Not that we’ll have an easy time convincing the American people of this basic fact—that we have achieved victory over Al Qaeda in Iraq (because, as the NYT notes today, America has turned inward, a fact reflected in the change in foreign news coverage in just the last three years [e.a.]:

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study. …

Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

Really? Because we Americans are so special that we don’t need to know what’s happening elsewhere … Right?

Well maybe we’ll get “lucky” and the next really bad thing will happen far away, in Europe.

What? You’ve never heard of Europe?

Well, it’s the place that the Obama Messiah visited back in July 2008.

Remember?

In the wake of the flawlessly executed rescue operation that liberated fifteen hostages (including three Americans and the cause celebre Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt), who had been held in the jungle, in chains around their necks, by the Colombian terrorist group FARC for more than five years, Charles Krauthammer describes the hard problems facing the world that have only hard-power solutions:

Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy — Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about — the only solution is foreign intervention.

And who’s going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the last two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor — the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy — and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done — often with the support of the American military. “Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work,” explained The Washington Post. “It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces … a vast intelligence-gathering operation … and training programs for Colombian troops.”

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States.

The United States will get no thanks. Nor should the United States expect any thanks in this political and geopolitical climate.

Nevertheless, the United States should continue to do this kind of job.

Anybody disagree?

These two headlines were next to each other at Memeorandum yesterday:

John Bolton to be target of citizen’s arrest at Hay Festival — John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, faces a citizen’s arrest when he addresses an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales this evening. — George Monbiot, the journalist and activist …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Discussion: MoJoBlog and A Blog For All

Discussion:

Jonathan Stein / MoJoBlog: John Bolton to Be Target of Citizens Arrest in Wales

Lawhawk / A Blog For All: Journalist Seeks To Arrest John Bolton in UK

New York Times:

Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally Women — BRUSSELS — On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes. — In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

 

Discussion: Jihad Watch, JammieWearingFool, The Poor Man Institute and Danger Room

Discussion:

Robert / Jihad Watch: Muslim woman wages Internet jihad in Belgium

JammieWearingFool: ‘She is Very Radical, Very Sly and Very Dangerous’

The Poor Man Institute: I am beginning to suspect that the War on Terror is composed entirely of horses**t

Noah Shachtman / Danger Room: She Wages Online Jihad

I’ve been saying for a while now that the world is upside down. These headlines underscore that reality:

The former U.S. ambassador to the UN—whose role is to represent the United States in front of the world—is targeted by “progressives” [in this case, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper] as a criminal because he was ” ‘instrumental in preparing and initiating the Iraq war by disseminating false claims through the State Department” while he was under-secretary of state for arms control.’ ”

Meanwhile, an acknowledged jihadist, whose role is “to inspire other people to wage jihad,”gets the front page treatment in the New York Times, which quotes the director of Belgium’s federal police force thus: “She enjoys the protection that [lenient Belgian law] offers. At the same time, she is a potential threat.”

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that “war-mongering” is being treated as a crime on one side—namely, ours—but not on the other. Not very fair, that. Nor very confidence-inspiring for your normal everyday citizen of the West, who wants the authorities to prevent crimes—to act before a terrorist incident occurs, not to react afterward.

After all, anyone can react after a crime is committed—in any number of ways, including the extralegal. If the authorities allow too many such crimes to occur (through lenient laws, or lenient enforcement of laws), eventually the people being hurt by such crimes will start to take the law into their own hands.

The strong counter-terrorism efforts undertaken by the British government are announced by officials and covered by the press, and so it’s logical to assume that the British people are aware of the various programs, right?

Probably not, Timothy Garton Ash suggests:

This has got to stop. Britain’s snooper state is getting completely out of hand. We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society, and we must wake up. When the Stasi started spying on me, as I moved around East Germany 30 years ago, I travelled on the assumption that I was coming from one of the freest countries in the world to one of the least free. I don’t think I was wrong then, but I would certainly be wrong now. Today, the people of East Germany are much less spied upon than the people of Britain. The human rights group Privacy International rates Britain as an “endemic surveillance society”, along with China and Russia, whereas Germany scores much better.

What degree of infringement on our freedoms are we willing to tolerate in order to feel secure?

It seems quaint now (shamefully so) to think of how outraged I felt only ten years ago when, in conversation with friends, I heatedly accused Rudy Giuliani of being a “fascist” for his Orwellian installation of surveillance cameras in Washington Square Park (in an effort to keep out drug dealers and other undesirables).

Like many people, since 9/11 I’ve traveled a long road in search of answers to these questions—without success so far.

Something’s gonna have to be done about Tina Fey, who was profiled in the NYT about her surprising hit show 30 Rock. She admitted that America’s Mayor is her weakness:

In writing for Liz, Ms. Fey said, she drew somewhat on her own experiences in television. In one episode Liz is called a vulgar name by a subordinate, an incident that Ms. Fey said was based on something that happened to her.

In another episode, in which Liz reflects on things about herself that others wouldn’t know, she says, “There is an 80 percent chance” that she will “tell all my friends I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain.”

Ms. Fey, who wrote that line, said it was semi-autobiographical, a way of “admitting I have a lot of liberal feelings, but I also live in New York, and I want to feel safe, and I secretly kind of want Giuliani.”

As I was saying just recently …

The Democrats in general, and MoveOn specifically, seem not to realize that in order to deliver politically correct votes, you need to do a lot more than kneecap people into spouting politically correct attitudes in the public square. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

My point about Rudy Giuliani was that he knows a lot about the kind of public political correctness that elects a “fascist” to a second term in a huge victory in decidedly not-”fascist” New York City.

Anybody paying attention?
Nah, I didn’t think so.

I first posted about BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in mid-March, when he was kidnapped in the streets of Gaza. I had expected his abduction to catch the attention of the MSM, since he was one of their own. Instead, except for many, prolonged protests held by Palestinian and British journalists, there has been a troubling silence. (You can follow all my posts about Johnston here. You can read a few posts about kidnapping as the terrorist tactic du jour here, here, and here.)
Until today. The group holding Johnston released a propaganda video:

He is wearing a red sweatshirt and reading out what appears to be Palestinian propaganda denouncing Israel and the Middle East policies of Britain and America. He appears calm and without any visible injuries.

His voice, familiar to many BBC listeners and viewers from his 16-year career with the corporation, is measured. He says he is “in Gaza”. …

During a three-minute speech, Mr Johnston accuses Britain and the US of causing suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and for “occupying Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places”.

He starts to give a message to his family but is cut off. Subtitles then appear on the video, saying: “The BBC refused to take this message to his family”.

Naturally, the family is relieved to have this sign of life from Johnston, although no one can say when the video was shot. But this isn’t anything like relief for the family—it’s extended agony:

Norman Kember, 76, a British peace campaigner held hostage for more than four months in Baghdad in 2005, said the video was designed to cause “maximum stress” to Mr Johnston’s family and the Government.

He drew comparisons between the orange suit he was given to wear during videos and Mr Johnston’s red sweatshirt. He said: “I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the Government and relatives.”

The British government is well aware of that:

The video was condemned by the Foreign Office for the distress it caused the family and Tony Blair used a press conference at the end of his African tour to call for the kidnappers to release Mr Johnston, who passed his 45th birthday in captivity.

Also calling for the release of Johnston is Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian “prime minister” of Chaos and In-fighting.

“We are renewing our demands of the men, the abductors of the British journalist, to protect him and not to harm his life and to immediately release the journalist,” Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

“This is an action that does not serve Islam, does not serve the Palestinian cause, and does not serve those who have abducted him.”

Johnston’s kidnappers would surely disagree. It serves them just fine as a recruitment tool for the wretched, dispirited youth of Gaza, who have been failed by two successive generations of their “leaders” (and failed, too, by two successive generations of Israelis, who have been unable to collectively rise above the massive hatred and violence engendered by their reclaiming the Jews’ ancestral homeland). These young men were once ripe for the picking by Hamas. Now that Hamas has also failed them, they’re ripe for the picking of by Qaeda.

You can read all about it here in the NYT. Read it and weep.

This recent wave of abductions of Westerners in the region began with the June 2006 kidnapping by Palestinians of the Israel soldier Gilad Shalit. (At the time, I held Hamas responsible for an act of war; now we know it was this shady Army of Islam group that was responsible, and that they’re not under Hamas’s, or Fatah’s, control—which is part of the problem in Gaza) It was followed a month later by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah—they’re not Palestinians, they’re Lebanese, and this happened in a different region: in the north of Israel. Second Lebanon War followed in August.

And now I feel like I belong on the Daily Show. Still with me? Good.

Anyway: The same Palestinian group (the al Qaeda-inspired Army of Islam) that snatched the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June snatched the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston this March.

In between, there was the abduction and release (after a forced conversion to Islam) of two Fox journalists in August 2006.

I think you get the picture: there’s chaos in Gaza—so much chaos that Hamas begins to look moderate compared to the al Qaeda-inspired nihilist thugs doing these freelance operations, from kidnapping to setting fire to Internet cafes. And the prospect of anyone on the Palestinian side following a “road map” to peace with the Israelis is brought into relief as the deeply cynical and totally ludicrous political theater it is. What negotiated agreements could hold up under chaos, and when no one group among the Palestinians has the monopoly on the use of force?

Also: remember that there have been no Western journalists in Gaza since Johnston was abducted. The Palestinian journalists operating there must be under tremendous pressure and risk in this deeply uncertain political climate. Freedom of the press is the last thing that al Qaeda-type thinking tolerates. These journalists are very brave people, but we cannot know the extent of what is happening.

Keep your eye on this situation. It’s very dangerous indeed.

And spare a thought not just for Alan Johnston but also for the American hostages being held in Iran.

Douglas Farah reports on an uptick in media offerings from al Qaeda, which, like everyone else these days, has to struggle to remain relevant in a merciless 24/7 media environment and with an audience that has the attention span of a flea:

This past week has been interesting for the sudden re-emergence of the high-profile al Qaeda/salafist propaganda machine, showing a broad range of Islamist actions to demonstrate the movement is alive and well, and triumph is inevitable.

We get the publishing [of] a slick web zine, the “Voice of Jihad,” after a two-year hiatus, including directions from Osama bin Laden to attack oil facilities; a Zawahiri interview blasting Bush for fairly current events; the release of videos by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, supposedly showing attacks on Coalition forces; and, as Evan Kohlmann finds new video releases by Al Qaeda in Iraq, including the biographies of foreign troops killed there.

As Farah notes, al Qaeda is focused on media. These recent propaganda efforts are impressive compared to previous grainy videos from the group. This speaks to the group’s determination to communicate and spread its message globally. Which it has so far done quite successfully:

Much of what is said in this recent spate is entirely propaganda, but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. It shows those who visit the jihadi sites that the Islamist movement is alive and well, capable of delivering messages and combating the enemy on a sustained basis.

Then Farah veers into my favorite topic—message creation.***

Any insurgent group, fighting in an asymmetrical context for the long term, has to develop a narrative to justify itself, comfort its often-beleaguered members and attract new members. …

In this case the narrative is that Islam is on the rise, the West is in retreat, and that Allah has already granted victory to the faithful. All that is lacking are more willing recruits.

And this is where we move into the counterterrorism territory suggested by both anthropologist David Kilcullen and “Enlightenment fundamentalist” Aayan Hirsi Alik, who have both said that potential jihadis must be turned away by appealing alternatives before they sign on to the extremists’ seductive agenda.
Farah writes:

What must be developed is the counter-narrative, one that resonates, explains the weaknesses and defeats, and can help drive away new recruits.

It is hard, but not impossible. Multiple insurgencies have faced, and suffered from, effective counter-narratives that were culturally appropriate and accessible to the right population.

It is not clear we have a counter-narrative, in part because we still do not agree 1) one who the enemy is and 2) that we really are in a war.

The last point is depressing but true. I want to know more about the counter-narratives Farah is talking about. And I wish I could see evidence that others were paying attention to this subject, of paramount importance.

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s NYTimes leads with a story that says reports of al Qaeda’s death have been greatly exaggerated:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

In light of their recent calls on followers to hit oil installations across the world and to be sure to film their actions, I think it’s safe to say they want to put on a really good show.

——–

*** I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Frank Rich (among many others) is wasting his brain cells developing new crackpot conspiracy theories to explain the behavior of Bush & Co.  Today, for example, he writes:

Let’s not forget that the White House’s stunt of repackaging old, fear-inducing news for public consumption has a long track record. Its reason for doing so is always the same: to distract the public from reality that runs counter to the White House’s political interests.

I wish these brilliant analysts would spend just a fraction of their time deconstructing the other characters populating the world stage—you know, the ones who are causing real trouble for us. We need a guide to understanding their behavior, too.

(via Memeorandum)

I guess he’s feeling left out, because no one paid attention to his last message. This time he’s got a doozy. He heaps praise on Muslim women in the West who don the veil as implicit supporters of his cause:

AL-QAEDA’S deputy leader… praised Muslim women who insist on wearing the Islamic veil despite pressures not to in some Western lands.

He described anyone doing that as “a soldier in the battle of Islam against the Zionist- Crusader attack”.

Will this bald-faced attempt to hijack Islam in the name of Al Qaeda garner attention in the media?

Stay tuned.

Gilding the lily, Zawahiri also repeats his insistence (ignored a few weeks ago) that Palestinians stop cooperating with their democratically elected government.

“O mujahideen brothers in Palestine … the traitor secularists cannot be your brothers, do not give them legitimacy or take part in their assemblies, which are opposed to Islamic principles.”How can [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas… or [his aide] Mohammed Dahlan be our brothers when they have grown fat on the Jews’ bribes and the Americans’ gifts.”

Stirring, stirring, stirring the Muslim-on-Muslim pot.

(updated with a p.p.s.)

Over at Slate, Shmuel Rosner raises the complicated issues involved in the West’s strong support for the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas (support that now comes also from Israel’s Olmert, as I mentioned earlier today) and the concomitant attempt to squash the radical theocratic Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas (which, inconveniently, was democratically elected in January—oops!).

As the dangerous situation in the Palestinian territories unravels, one question stands out: Who are the good guys? The politicians who are now trying to topple a democratically elected government or the people in power who are trying to pursue their ideology—one that they didn’t hide from the voters who freely chose to elect them? And how come all these world leaders are publicly siding with the revolutionaries?

One word. Ready for it? Realism—as in cynicism and in international relations “realism.”

Whatever you think of the Baker-Hamilton report and its shortcomings, it is realism that is making headway this week in the Palestinian territories. Realism—and a healthy dose of cynicism.

So, the Palestinians who oppose Abbas’ moves will be right when they point to this chain of events as the culmination of Western hypocrisy. But those who support him—in Palestine and around the world—will also be right. Sometimes, hypocrisy is the most basic way to recognize reality.

Hypocrisy: get used to it (although, truth be told, if you’re not used to it by now, you’re living on another plane, not in the plugged-in Globally PC world of the early 21st century).

p.s. I would love to believe that this—plan B, wherein we (Western-style progressive/moderates) lay aside talk of democracy and unite against a common foe (Islamofascist reactionaries)—will work. (I have grave doubts; but there’s always hope.)

As pertains to foreign policy: I think we (liberal hawkish neocon fellow-travelers) should not be wedded to ideology; that we should face the fact that conditions on the ground in Iraq were resistant to the fondest and sincerest hopes of the war planners; that democracy is still a goal but further off from realization in Iraq—and the Middle East, where representative government is stymied by tribalism—than we had hoped; that the chaos in the Middle East can only be (if that) managed (we hope), not solved; that regardless of how we handle Iraq, managing the Middle East would be well served by a concerted effort to make big public gestures to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people (in a way that does not threaten Israeli security any more than it is already threatened); that an improvement in the lot of the Palestinian people is long, long overdue and a good in and of itself; and finally: that a visible improvement in the lot of the Palestinian people would be the biggest PR coup in living memory—and that it would force a change on the region.

But I may be daydreaming. Because that is precisely what our enemies are doing their level best to prevent.

p.p.s. For Rosner, Fatah are the “good guys” and Hamas are the “bad guys.”

For Jimmy Carter, the good guys are the Palestinians and the bad guys are the Israelis: that’s so 20th century.

Everybody’s blaming the Jews anyway—why not Sudan’s “leader”?

Sudan’s President Field Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir claimed Tuesday that reports in western newspapers of hundreds of thousands dead in his country’s brutal civil war are all part of an Israeli-led worldwide conspiracy. …

In statements that appeared to be more in keeping with 1920s anti-Semitism than statesmanship, Field Marshal al-Bashir added that Israeli influence was at the center of the conflict, and all the world’s disputes.

Not very effective, those Jews. Despite their best efforts, they only managed to get 9,000—not 400,000, as reported by the world press—killed in Darfur.

Read the rest of his appalling lies here.