Of course, with his enemy not pursuing victory and preparing to leave Iraq soon, it isn't hard for Zawahiri to see victory in sight. Regarding Afghanistan, he says: "We will show you who will be soon fleeing Kabul, in defeat, fear and humiliation." Given Washington's openness to find an accord with a mythical "moderate Taliban," that may not even be necessary for Zawahiri to achieve his goals. "Audio purportedly from al Qaeda No. 2 says victory coming," from CNN, July 20:
(CNN) -- A man identified as Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 man, promises his followers victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, vowing that these wars will eventually lead to a battle to liberate Jerusalem, in an audio message posted Monday on jihadist websites.The audio was released by As-Sahab Media, al Qaeda's production company. CNN could not verify the authenticity of the message.
Radical Islamists often use the Arab-Israeli struggle as a propaganda tool to recruit militants because they believe that Israel has no right to exist on what they consider to be Muslim and Arab land.
In the message, the speaker also says mujahedeens -- Islamic militants backed by the Taliban and al Qaeda -- are moving from one victory to another in Afghanistan against U.S.-led forces....
The audio message criticizes media coverage of the operation in Marjah, saying, "They made a big deal when they covered the Marjah battle ... but later on, they didn't want to report what was really happening on the ground, that the Mujahedeens were winning."
The speaker says the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban is stronger than ever -- an apparent reaction to reports that suggested the United States might be willing to deal with the Taliban if it distanced itself from al Qaeda. The message pledges al Qaeda's allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, calling him "the commander of the faithful."
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are believed to be living in the tribal areas of Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.
The speaker goes on to mock U.S. President Barack Obama and warns him that the United States will be defeated in Afghanistan and other Jihadi fronts. "Poor Obama came to Kabul and vowed that Taliban will never be back in power ... We will show you who will be soon fleeing Kabul, in defeat, fear and humiliation."
The speaker also blasts Arab leaders as "Zionists" in disguise for supporting Israel over Gaza and the war in Afghanistan. Zawahiri challenges the Muslim nations, including Egypt and Jordan, for supporting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq by sending Muslim troops to fight the Mujahedeen and providing intelligence services in order to capture and kill al-Qaeda operatives all over the world.
"They were clearly exposed by the heroic work of Abu Dajana Al-Khorasani," the message says, referring to the man believed to be the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian army captain on December 30 at a U.S. base in Khost, Afghanistan.
Criticizing the leadership of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, the speaker says, "The Arab Zionists that we deal with on a daily basis are much worse than the Jewish Zionist because they are the true traitors who constantly stab us in the back and the wounds only get deeper and deeper by the hour. They are much more dangerous than the Jewish Zionists."...
There will be a river of "payback" blood flowing, soon. Anyone that put their hopes in western promises of democracy should seek refuge while there is still time. A lesson for future targets of nation building in, dar al Islam.
America hasn't won a war since World War 2.
Graveyard of Empires.
You forgot the first Gulf War (1991)...
"Poor Obama came to Kabul and vowed that Taliban will never be back in power ... We will show you who will be soon fleeing Kabul, in defeat, fear and humiliation."
What??? Rasool Obama flee? In fear and humiliation?
We should only be that fortunate...Yesterday would have been timely...
The "victory" will be Pyrrhic, and brief. For if the Americans combine the intelligent withdrawal of their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan with other measures, undertaken carefully and intelligently, to show that we are now going to employ other, better, less squandering and more effective means, to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam, and to find ways to do so that the Arabs and Muslims are not expecting, and would have no way to effectively oppose, such as seizure of the southern Sudan and possibly Darfur, and holding them until referenda on independence can be held.
It is time to stop the nonsensical pressure on Israel to give up tangible assets, assets that it has a considerable legal, moral, ahd historic claim to, and to recognize that "peace processing" with Muslims, leading to what the West will call a "peace treaty" but all Muslims will understand to be a "hudna" or "truce treaty," part of a continuing siege of Israel that can only be understood properly as a Jihad, a war without end, leads to nothing good for the Infidel side.
And in Western Europe, the Americans must not only stop pressuring the E.U. to admit Turkey -- a folly beyond belief -- but start recognizing that the countries of Western Europe, and of North America, share an interest in not allowing the large-scale presence of Muslims to grow. We must stop trying to "win Muslim hearts and minds," but on the basis of an understanding, not a pretend-familiarity, with the texts and tenets of Islam, and a grasp of the psychology of Muslims, that is of the attitudes and atmospherics of societies suffused with Islam, including the blame-the-Infidel conspiracy theories, that naturally arise among those who have been taught that the great division of humanity is between Muslim and Infidel, and that between the two a state of permanent war (if not always of open warfare) exists. And then we have to disseminate this understanding, and to support those who already understand, and are working to halt, and then to reverse, the large-scale Muslim presence in Western Europe that has created a situation, for the indigenous non-Muslims and for immigrant non-Muslims too, is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale presence.
We can read Saudi Arabia the riot act and halt the deployment of Saudi (and other Gulf Arab) money to pay for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, propagand aided and abetted by Western hirelings. We can help the peoples of Western Europe refine and articulate their understanding of Islam. We can distribute the works of such apostates as Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and make sure their words are disseminated on Voice of America, on the Internet, and their books made available in a dozen languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and the various varieties of Bahasa.
We can do nothing to discourage Sunni-Shi'a discord. We can do everything to encourage the realization, among the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab, of all the ways that Islam is and always will be, despite its universalist claims, a vehicle for Arab supremacism. We can force the poorer Muslims to cease to rely on the hundreds of billions that we in the West have so foolishly transferred to them, and force them to put the rich Arabs to the test - the test of loyalty to fellow members of the Umma. Let the Saudis be asked to pay for Pakistan, let them, and the Emiratis and Kuwaitis and Qataris, pay for their poor fellow Muslims since, after all, they spend so much reinforcing and spreading the very cause of that poverty -- Islam itself.
No, we must not stay in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the necessary surgery to be performed on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and its nuclear project, should be -- as the up-to-date doctors like to say -- as non-invasive as possible.
The withdrawal will be met with a brief orgy of triumphalism. If the Americna government begins to do the kinds of things I suggest here, or starts to make clear that it is looking with favor on the poossiblity of doing them, and if it is clear that the brennans are out and those who are much better informed, and thus prepared to take an intelligently harder line, with all those who participate, directly or indirectly, in the "struggle" or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam -- with no more of this phoniness about what Jihad means, and the natural attitudes of Muslims, properly inculcated by Islam, towards Infidels --- then there is hope. The squandering may stop, and the husbanding of resources, and the clever use of means that do not require the expenditure of trillions of dollars, may start to work their demoralizing magic.
I need a new car. I'd be happy to write up the whole damn thing. Could the Pentagon budget afford to buy me that car, if I present them with everything they'd need? Say, a nice, late-model Honda Accord? Please, Pentagon, given that you have spent trillions on these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,, and tens of billions on winning Muslim hearts and minds, and billions on all the consultants and "experts" on terrorism and on "insurgencies" who have been making out like gangbusters, can't you sprint for the price of a 2007 or 2008 Honda Accord? Of course you can.
can't you sprint for the price of a 2007 or 2008 Honda Accord? Of course you can.
You should apply for a grant...To further your writing career...if you play your cards right, Rasool Obama might award you with a car and some cash...
I have a Honda Accord...1993, with less than 80,000 miles...
Great car...
We will show you who will be soon fleeing Kabul, in defeat, fear and humiliation.
Well I for one agree with Zawahiri about the fear and humiliation, but can't agree with the victory part.
*** 8:39 ***
Yes, it's hard to win when you refuse to name your enemy or define what constitutes victory.
*** 9:5 ***
But without the one-hand-behind-the-back rules of engagement we coulda laid waste to this hell-hole and all the Jihadis crawling over those mountains like so many cockroaches. But, ever since Viet Nam, our armed forces have been constrained and even killed due to insane ROE. Thanks to the reporting of Diana West, we know that General McChrystal put American Soldiers and Marines at risk, often letting them be maimed or killed so as not to offend Moslem sensibilities.
*** 33:60 ***
This insanity is a good analog to the cultural suicide we're now committing right here at home. Why this insanity? To play to the newspapers and networks at home. 30 years of collapse in our education system was bound to bear fruit, and here we are.
Things always look better from the inside of your cave.
Afghans are traditional warriors. Almost everybody has arms. If they didn't have a real affinity for the taliban, the taliban would already be gone, with no help from the West. We're beating our heads against a mudbrick wall.
The only reason we keep hearing the whine about our lack of commitment to them is because they want continued aid, not because they really want to drive out the islamists.
They like to brag about how no foreign power can ever win in Afghanistan. Well fine then, they should be able to handle the rag tag taliban with no problems.
Let's pull out and take our money with us. Hugh's well articulated strategy makes so much more sense than spending hard earned money that we can't spare on a populace that is not truly on board with what we are trying to accomplish.
There was always one and only one reason that I could see for US invovlement in Afghanistan: To capture Osama bin Laden, his lieutenants and high-level collaborating Taliban. Long-term involvement seemed then and even moreso seems now to be a waste of time, resources and personnel.
We're pretending that this is a police action. It isn't and shouldn't be treated as such. It is a single battle in a war that has been forced upon us. Afghanistan's only significance to the US, pipelines to the Central Asian "republics notwithstanding, was its use for al-Qaeda training camps. Aside from the likely need to push the termite mound over from time to time, we should have no troops on the ground there, with the exception of Special Ops that will help set up Predator missions.
So let Al-Zawahiri crow. Let's see if he has the grapes to do his crowing from a known location and at a known time. Let him define "victory" anyway he likes, from deep within the cave that he dare not leave.
There is only one way to get this bin laden and other high value targets. Deliver an ultimatum to the Porkies. Either hand over these al Qaeda criminals or face at total cutoff of all jiyza and all military aid and contracts. See how quickly the ISI of Porkiestan will discover Bin laden and his top cronies.
But as we have seen the more aid that is shoveled to them the more they make us run around like chicken with heads cutoff. Bombing here bombing there whoever the porkies point to friend or foes it doesn’t matter. These double dealing snakes are playing our weak and ineffectual president and military like chumps.
Zawahiri sounds happier this fighting season. ...did the 'faithfull' finally get his high blood pressured, ass in the air prayer room some reliable air conditioning?
Nothing new here, we've already told them when we're leaving.
And when we do scurry away with 'honour', we will leave behind thousands of tons of usable equipment, including munitions, which will assist the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents to take over those respective countries.
Oh yes, and another wild guess says the Western media will look the other way.
I think that the only thing on offer would be a Hudna Accord.
You know, the one that runs on the folly of, 'peace in our time' fuel.
Of course the US is losing. The incompetence of all our cowards-in-chief, Republican and Democrat.
We desperately, desperately, desperately need a new Center Party modeled after hero Geert Wilders' glorious Freedom Party and England's EDL, with American heroes Rudy Giuliani and Paul Sperry in charge.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.