And not just Al-Qaeda. Caliphate in seven easy steps. From Der Spiegel, with thanks to JS:
If there is anyone who might possibly have an inkling as to what al-Qaida are up to, it is the Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein. He has not only spent time in prison with al-Zarqawi, but has also managed make contact with many of the network's leaders. Based on correspondence with these sources, he has now brought out a book detailing the organization's master plan....One of Hussein's most sensational sources for the book, according to what he told SPIEGEL Online, was Seif al-Adl. The Egyptian terrorist, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks on the American Embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, has a ransom of US$5 million on his head from the FBI. Secret services suspect that al-Adl is now in Iran....
An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps
In the introduction, the Jordanian journalist writes, "I interviewed a whole range of al-Qaida members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future." What he then describes between pages 202 and 213 is a scenario, proof both of the terrorists' blindness as well as their brutal single-mindedness. In seven phases the terror network hopes to establish an Islamic caliphate which the West will then be too weak to fight.
The First Phase Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."
The Second Phase "Opening Eyes" is, according to Hussein's definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the "Islamic community." Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an "army" set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.
The Third Phase This is described as "Arising and Standing Up" and should last from 2007 to 2010. "There will be a focus on Syria," prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and -- even more explosive -- in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaida's masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.
The Fourth Phase Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that al-Qaida will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that "the creeping loss of the regimes' power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaida." At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.
The Fifth Phase This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaida hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.
The Sixth Phase Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of "total confrontation." As soon as the caliphate has been declared the "Islamic army" it will instigate the "fight between the believers and the non-believers" which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.
The Seventh Phase This final stage is described as "definitive victory." Hussein writes that in the terrorists' eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the "one-and-a-half billion Muslims," the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn't last longer than two years.
Read it all.
Do you hate Jews? Then, you had better read this article and reconsider your views.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/nyregion/18donate.html
How Old Friends of Israel Gave $14 Million to Help the Palestinians
By ANDY NEWMAN
It was perhaps an odd request to make of a man noted for his commitment to Israeli causes and his fierce criticism of the Palestinian Authority.
Please raise $14 million to help buy the Jewish settlers' lucrative greenhouses in the Gaza Strip so that the Palestinians can take them over when the settlers are gone. Oh, and can you get it done by the weekend, before the pullout starts? If not, the settlers will destroy the greenhouses on their way out of Gaza to keep them out of Arab hands.
Last Wednesday, though, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, real estate magnate and publisher of The Daily News, received just such a pitch from his friend James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, current Middle East envoy for the White House and would-be broker of the deal.
Mr. Zuckerman, who is also former head of the American-Israel Friendship League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum, said he thought about the ironies. But not for too long.
"Despite my skepticism," Mr. Zuckerman said in an interview on Tuesday, "I thought to myself, 'This is perhaps the only illustration or symbol of what could be the benefits of a co-operational, rather than a confrontational attitude.' "
So he in turn picked up the phone and called a few of his friends and fellow billionaires, who also happened to be prominent Jewish philanthropists.
Not all of them shared his enthusiasm. "Some people said, 'Well, if these people are so anti-Semitic, why should we do anything to help them?' " Mr. Zuckerman said.
But Lester Crown of Chicago, whose family owns General Dynamics, said yes. Leonard Stern, the chairman of the Hartz Mountain real estate empire and former owner of The Village Voice, called Mr. Zuckerman back from a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and said yes. A foundation that prefers to remain anonymous said yes.
Within 48 hours, Mr. Zuckerman said, he had his $14 million. And the Palestinians had a shot at inheriting relatively intact the greenhouses whose vegetables and flowers have been a major source of Israeli export income, and, not incidentally, about 3,500 desperately needed Palestinian jobs.
When the deal was announced Friday, the donors were anonymous, apart from Mr. Wolfensohn, who put up $500,000 of his own. But word about these things tends to leak out, and yesterday morning, Mr. Stern said he got a call at his beach house in the Hamptons from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"She said that she wanted to let me know that myself and every member of the group that helped make this possible had made a very positive contribution to the peace," he said. Mr. Stern, 67, was asked the last time he received a call from Ms. Rice. "Before my bar mitzvah," he joked, before answering, "Never."
The purchase of the greenhouses had been months in the making. The Israeli government is giving the settlers $55 million for the greenhouses themselves, but Israeli law allows compensation only for buildings and land, not for movables like the greenhouses' computerized irrigation systems.
Without those, the Palestinians would not be able to make a go of running the greenhouses, Mr. Zuckerman said. It was those, the greenhouse guts, that carried the $14 million price tag.
The United States Agency for International Development was willing to put up the money, but could not give it directly to the Israelis because Israel does not qualify for the agency's help, Mr. Zuckerman and Mr. Stern said.
The simple way around that obstacle would have been for the agency to give the money to the Palestinian Authority to hand over to the settlers. But there, Mr. Zuckerman said, "The attitude was, 'We are not going to put our fingerprints on anything that helps the Jews.' "
The donors arranged to funnel their money to the Aspen Institute, a private advocacy group that has been working on investments in the Palestinian areas, and a private Israeli group helped broker the deal with the settlers.
Mr. Stern said he was not used to writing a seven-figure check to a cause he had not had time to research himself.
"But when you know people and you know they're passionate, and you have a great respect for their judgment," he said of Mr. Zuckerman, "I listened to him, and I asked him one question. 'Are you contributing?' He said yes. I said 'Well, O.K., then I will.' "
Mr. Zuckerman is hardly naïve about the prospects for peace in the Middle East.
On Monday in U.S. News & World Report, which he also publishes, he wrote an editorial excoriating both the Palestinian Authority's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and his more violent, increasingly powerful rivals in Hamas.
"The sad fact," Mr. Zuckerman wrote, "is that everything is going wrong."
But some hope, he said, is better than no hope.
"It's not an easy thing to be up against," Mr. Zuckerman yesterday, "when someone is swearing and yelling at you, and you're saying, 'O.K., well, I'm going to give you $14 million so that you can do better.' But this is the one thing that might be seen as a constructive effort."
It makes me sick to think that the Israelis' greenhouses are going to the neanderthals that killed so many settlers. They should have to develop their own land and use their own skills(but then again, can you make the land blossom with rockets and bomb belts?)
This was something I wondered about last week, regarding whether or not infrastructure would be left in place for the Palestinians.
While it seems unfair, it could be a good opportunity to see if in fact the Palestinians can do anything beside wreak death and destruction. Granted, they get a turnkey operation handed to them, welfare-style, as opposed to their creating something, but if, in 6 months or a year, the winds moan through the tattered covers, the irrigation systems are looted, and everything reeks of the stench of wasted potential, the Isrealis will have been compensated for something they would have destroyed anyway, and the world will have yet another example of the Palestinians inherent inability to make any effort at joining the civilized world and taking their places as productive human beings, and who will they be able to blame then?
Yeah, I know, I know.
Besides, don't look at it as losing land through withdrawal, look at it as gaining a friendly-free field of fire.
I believe the idea of establishing a global Caliphate was part of the ideology architected by Sayyid Qutb. What I don't get is why this dead guy and his ideology isn't talked about much by the MSM and a lot of bloggers who post on the subject of Islamic Terror.
I keep telling people, it's the ideology, stupid! The Left seems to think this is about greedy corporations and Western oligarchies. No, it's about a Utopian vision that seeks to impose itself on the world and kill or imprison all of us. They've already told us this. Many of us get the message, but we need the help from those who aren't listening to join the fight.
"The Sixth Phase: Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of 'total confrontation.' As soon as the caliphate has been declared the 'Islamic army' it will instigate the 'fight between the believers and the non-believers' which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden."
In other words, people, World War III is in the making. Remember, you read it here first.
Now if only we can get some of our ostrich-playing brethren to pull their heads out of the sand...
Now come all the apologists telling us how this is just a "tiny minority" and wahhabism is a heresy of islam. They are telling us...right out loud, in our faces...believe them.
"Al-Qaida's masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization."
A strategy which, of course, worked for arafat. He was then elevated in Eurabia from terrorist to "statesman". Bound to work again, right? (Of course, Eurabia might have other concerns closer to home in two or three more years, like a civil war.......)
It is time that Democracies throught the world united and shared their intelligence and prepared for all out war. If the Islamists want a global Caliphate they will have to fight for it.
We should arrange for nuclear strikes in the same manner as during to cold war. This time we should seek alliamces with Russia, China, India and all the other nuclear powers to target all of the Middle East and anywhere else who is not prepared to eradicate supporters of Islamofacism.
We should accept that we are facing a showdown with destiny and be prepared to wipe the Islamists from the face of the earth.
60 million people died in WW2.
The world got over it
We did what we had to do.
We should be prepared to go all out again. Take over the Arabian oil field. Impound all the Arab funds, and Stuff it to them good style before they can do it to us. The sooner the beter.
It won`t happen.
Because we are the good guys. We are so good, we prefer having our throats slit rather than do something bad, like admitting that not every religion is peace-loving.
I am on other lists, and I feel like banging my head into the wall. Nothing will wake up the intelligentsia. Nothing.
Time to study the Koran and get circumcised...
Mentat posted "How Old Friends of Israel Gave $14 Million to Help the Palestinians"
That is insanity. The hydroponics will be useless to the "Palestinians". They might find a use for the fertilizer though, if the Old Friends of Israel feel like donating some fuel oil and a Ryder rental truck.
Anyways, nice of the jihadists to publish their timeline vis-a-vis the caliphate. Once we get past the 2008 elections, that still gives us 6 years to develop alternate energy sources and wean ourselves off the Saudi oil teat.
"In other words, people, World War III is in the making."
Actually, it is World War IV and it is already in progress. Although mostly fought by proxy, WW III was the cold war.
This sounds like wishful-thinking taking advantage of a bad situation to try to make it seem like a plan, after the fact.
Aesop's "sweet lemons" rationalization at work.
I doubt these opportunistic, self-aggrandizing idiots had any initial concept but mayhem and a hope for local power-grabbing once the circumstances got messy enough.
But, fed these 'glorifying ideas' by the defeatest Western press and 'treason of the intellectuals' class, they're starting to buy their own megalomaniacal b.s. (Restored Caliphate, as absurdum.)
The problem is: greater Mohammedan morons throughout the Islamic world, fed this propagandizing pap via the internet, Muslim media, etc., will begin to believe that this haphazard, jury-rigged terroristic chaos was a real cunning strategy all along.
And will fall in line like sacrosanct suckers to aid it, even more delusional than the leadership, but still VERY VERY dangerous in their Imperialistic Islamic somnambulistic death march.
Well said, BigSleep. The part I like best is the notion that the umma will be united under the al-queda flag. You betcha. I like Hugh's notion of isolating these narcissists and keeping them at arm's length from civilization. Bottom line, these jihadis are not nice people. They don't play well with others, including one another. If isolated, it won't take them long to be at each other's throats, literally.
I believe they mean it. And they will manage a great deal of mischief. But one thing they have not been willing to learn from history - and the reason why even Prussia was hesitant to go to war - is that those who start a war are not always those who win it. in this case, the Restored Caliphate would not last long.
Twould be foolish not to take these fools seriously.
They say what they mean and mean what they say, and they are relentless.
The West, to save itself and prevail, must be well informed, strategic and proactive.
God bless America.
(And G.W.Bush - for all the criticism by the flakes of the Left, he sure appoints the right people - Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Bolton.)
Don Miguel is right, we won World War Three thanks to Ronald Reagan.
Some years ago Richard Nixon (remember him?) wrote a book called "The Real War." He was so outraged by Jimmie Carter's incompetence and idiocy in the face of both Soviet and Iranian aggression, that he rose above his own humiliations and stepped back into politics as a silent advisor.
Nixon scolded Carter, and liberals in general, for not recognizing that we were in a World War with the Soviet Union. He said we could win that war if we recognized the enemy, and its strategy, and were diligent in pursuing certain policies. He also said that after we won, we should not relax because the next big problem would be the rise of "radical islam". Reagan "read the book" and took on the Soviets, but he entered Lebanon too soon and not ready. He couldn't fight two beasts at once, and retreated from Lebanon in 1983.
Well, we won World War III, and then everybody wanted to spend the "peace dividend" on social programs and other forms of corruption. We thought we were safe and turned our backs. But the next war (this one) was already on the horizon. Unfortunately, even now, only an alert few can see the coming swarm.
The plan for the caliphate is genuine. Their timing may or may not be very accurate, and it doesn't matter much right now if some of the factions are disorganized. They have a plan and determination. That is to be respected as being more powerful in comparison to disorganization and confusion, which are right now the characteristics of the Western Opposition.
I wonder where China fits in the picture.
From what I see, Europe and the US are doomed. We are sitting passively, while the Jihadists prepare to slit our throat.
But China is different. Unlike Europe and the UW, the Chinese have a their own culture, and are robust in defending it. Even when under assault as a minority (remember the islamic riots in Indonesia after Suharto died?) the Chinese will at least fight back. And China does not have islamic immigration (although they have a small resive islamic province at the edge of the empire - but that can be dealt with).
And by 2020, when OBLs caliphate is to take place, China will be a superpower.
So, will 1.3 million Chinese save the day?
Mentat et al:
It does seem quite insane to give a wad of money to the Gazans and see what they do with it, but it could be very instructive too. If they prove themselves incapable of successfully running these currently viable operations, how's that gonna look? ...like maybe there is more than a germ of truth in the contention that some hold that what motivates the hatred toward Israel is the resentment of its success and not the displacement of a population, many of whom were migrants who came to benefit from the improved economy that followed Jewish investment and development.
What al-Qaida Really Wants:
If this episode in our shared history does reach fruition within their game plan, I would be very surprised.
You see, even the most vehemently leftist tree hugger will have to see the big Jihad picture before then.
So many variables to their plan. Pakistan for one - if our M8 the General gets assassinated within shouting distance of now, for instance.
What if Jihad in Government takes his place - can we sit & watch Osama heading the parade in Islamabad with the 60 ICBMs they apparently now have? Zawahiri riding atop the new cruise missiles they recently tested, waving to the faithful American & UK flag burners?. No, it simply won't do, the little people would not stand for it - Pakistan would have to go there & then. No pre-amble, no negotiation, no waiting for a gentlemens agreement involving Mutually Assured Destruction - take our chances & press the button, & hope that the guidance technology they stole has glitches.
A global fascist threat that was credible, visible & looks as though it could actually achieve its aims would not be allowed, even if it is dressed as religion.
Even if it killed us all.