Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the learned analysts' ongoing fixation with Al-Qaeda:
The refusal to discuss Jihad and the varied instruments that are employed to further Jihad has led to the use of the phrase "war on terror." This phrase diverts attention from all the other instruments of Jihad -- oil revenues, Da'wa unchecked world-wide, demographic conquest within the Lands of the Infidels. It thereby continues to mislead unwary Infidels, whose attention becomes fixed on this "war on terror."This error is compounded, from lack of intelligent interest, by the focusing of attention not on the hundreds of terrorist groups whose names are known, but on one particular group: Al-Qaeda. This is foolish. It is foolish given that there are many others who are promoting the worldwide Jihad through their own local expressions of it, with here Hamas, there Hezbollah, over there Laskar Jihad, and even further on Jemaah Islamiya or Jaish-e-Mohammad or Ansar al-Islam or Jaish-e-Toiba or...(fill up the website with another few hundred names).
One example of the resulting confusion is the silly discussion by those in the Bush Administration, and by those attacking the Bush Administration, about whether or not Saddam Hussein's regime had close, not-so-close, or nonexistent ties with Al Qaeda. The Bush Administration, having started this whole "war on terror" and "Al Qaeda" business, cannot, apparently, tell the truth and answer its critics by asking them: Why does it matter? Was not Saddam Hussein an aggressive Arab and Muslim leader, who despite his well-known falls from Islamic good graces had spent the last decade re-establishing himself as a good Muslim, putting Qur'anic verses on the Iraqi flag, building the largest mosque in the world, using his own blood for a specially-calligraphed Qur'an, and so on and so predictably forth. Did he not contribute to Muslim terrorists by giving $25,000 to the families of each suicide bomber involved in the Lesser Jihad against Israel? Does anyone doubt that the weaponry he might have acquired could have been used against the Infidels, either by his regime or by one that followed it, or by elements in Iraq that might be able to divert such weaponry at some point? The fear of Saddam Hussein's acquisition of such weaponry can be justified without any reference to Al Qaeda. His country is Muslim; Muslims are taught to expand the territory where Islam will dominate and to permit local Infidels to live, but only if they submit to certain onerous and, for many over the centuries, utterly intolerable conditions.When you hear someone talk about the "war on terror," you know that someone is limited. He is simply not very intelligent or has not thought things through. I just received a note from someone, a visitor to this site, who attended a debate last night at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard on the topic of "Should the Americans withdraw from Iraq." My appalled informant noted the use of that phrase "war on terror" and all that it implies by both William Kristol and John Deutch. Kristol also said that "we are winning" and "we can win," without explaining what that "winning" would do to promote Infidel interests, as opposed to letting sectarian and ethnic tensions take their natural course. Deutch for a year was head of the CIA. Yet the display he offered yesterday was on the level of another former CIA head, James Woolsey, himself an enthusiast for the Light Unto the Muslim Nations Project, in his failure to understand Islam, or to get beyond Iraq to the worldwide problem, which is most acute in Western Europe.
Kristol is merely one more Bright Young Conservative Careerist. But Deutch is a University Professor at MIT and a former head of the CIA. He has all the time in the world to read widely in the history of Jihad conquest and the subjugation of non-Muslims. He has all the time in the world to read Bat Ye'or and a hundred others -- and obviously, judging by the dozen telling snippets from his "debate" interventions, he has not. Not a hint that the best reason for leaving Iraq is to exploit the sectarian and ethnic fissures, to force both Iran and Saudi Arabia to expend men, materiel, and money in backing their side in a proxy war in Iraq, to hope that Shi'a unrest and Sunni counter-pressure develop in Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Lebanon, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia -- no, that was not even conceivable to either of these "debaters," who hardly scratched the surface at that grand thing, the Kennedy School of Government.
The Yiddish dismissive reduplicative has entered the language. Dennis Potter titled one of his television plays for the old BBC "Oedipus Shmoedipus," a phrase alluding to the Jewish mother who, upon being told that someone suffers from an "oedipus complex," says "Oedipus Shmoedipus, as long as he loves his mother."
Al-Qaeda, Al-Shmaeda -- as long as he hates the Infidels.
The Al-Q smokescreen keeps us from realising the true horror of our reality. That it's Islam. Not Al-Q, or Jemaah-Islamiyah, or the Soldiers of This, or the Warriors of That. It's Islam, plain and simple. I hate it when you hear some official say, almost with relief, that some attack was NOT due to Al-Q, like that makes it all better, and we should all just never mind and carry on thinking the fantasy that Islam is really a religion of peace and tolerance.
They're all the same. They have the same goal. Just like all these federations, councils, groups and societies Muslims have in our countries. The Muslim Council of Blah blah blah. The Islamic Federation of Yadda Yadda Yadda. Who cares?!?!? They hate us, they want to destroy us, some violently, some non-violently. It makes no difference.
No one in power in West will discuss the elephant in the room.
Elephant shmelephant. Surely most people know what is meant by Al Qaeda, namely Islam? Isn't Al Qaeda just a code name?
I haven't heard any of the defenders of the IZ/AQ link tying themselves down to AQ. Rather, it has been pretty clear that AQ was one of many proxies IZ was willing to support. Those contending that there was no connection between IZ and AQ are the ones tying themselves down to that connection, and that connection only. While I understand your point, I doubt that Stephen Hayes, for example, would make such a narrow assertion.
I think that many think of AQ like SMERSH, the all-powerful, all-reaching KGB-like adversary of James Bond. AQ is not, but at this point they are, indeed, a useful distraction from the wider jihad, and it is very, very difficult to get people to broaden their scope from targeting an individual terrorist, node or net, to a broader picture of the threatening sea that AQ rises out of.
i think al-queda means,"the base".
Yes it does. But nobody I know really believes in it. "Linked to Al Qaeda" just means "active Muslim".
"the threatening sea that AQ rises out of."
-- from a posting above
And then to take arms -- arms of every kind, not merely military, as some appear to think -- against this particular sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them -- or if not end them, at least reduce them to manageable backyard-pool size.
Acknowledging Saddam's courtship with A-Q has its value: to demonstrate that even some ostensibly secular Muslims will make deals with the fundamentalists (and vice versa) when it suits their expansionist totalitarian purposes.
And nobody needs to hear this message more loudly than elements on the left who, out of their kneejerk anti-Americanism, suck up to both of these ugly ducklings.
Al Qaeda is only one facet of the jihad. Personally, I'm more worried about stuff like this: http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-04/10/article04.shtml
Of course scaromouche, this is more worrying but dawah is encouraged by muslims, and christians, we are doing something to renew christianism and convert these muslims.
This is the main question, it´s a work of all. Me, you and all.
This is my first posting here, so please forgive me if this topic has already been covered.
What would happen if we (the U.S.) just dropped all business in the Middle East - basically gave the extremist what they want? If we could muster enough discipline to live without their oil, would it break their backs? This question has been puzzling me for a couple of years, after I witnessed the attacks in lower NYC first hand - both 9/11 and the 1993 bombing of the parking garage of the WTC.
Is our government and industry that intertwined with this part of the world that we couldn't try this? I'd like to think that they'd kill off the terrorists and try to get back in our good graces. If it were up to me, I wouldn't buy one drop of oil from them until they AT LEAST turned in bin laden and started changing their culture into one that is less hostile.
I would start by announcing that due to the overwhelming popularity of terrorism, and jihad, we are hereby withdrawing all of our resources from the entire Arab and Muslim world.
Of course, if they attack us, we will have to retaliate in such a way that they’ll never try it again.
Just a thought.
Hugh, Hamlet's soliloquy notwithstanding, buckets will work better than arms to drain the pool.