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Raymond Ibrahim: Winning the Battle Against Al-Qaeda, Losing the War Against Jihad

Sep 12, 2011 9:55 am By Raymond Ibrahim

Saturday on Pajamas Media (via RaymondIbrahim.com) I discussed how even if al-Qaeda were obliterated from existence, the terror threat to the West would remain, since al-Qaeda was never the source of terror — see Koran 8:60 for an idea on where terrorizing infidels originates — but simply one of its manifestations:

So long as the West focuses on names and faces in the so-called “war on terror–”as opposed to focusing on ideas and motivations””so long will it possibly win battles, even as it slowly loses the war.

As we approach the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, we win another battle with the recent slaying of al-Qaeda’s number 2. According to the Associated Press, “U.S. and Pakistani officials said Saturday that al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat.”

Splendid news. However, some context:

Before Osama bin Laden, the face of al-Qaeda, was killed, it made sense to announce, by way of prelude, the killing of various al-Qaeda members, such as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, Abu Ayub al-Masri , Abu Laith al-Libi, the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and any number of other “Abus” (and “Ibns”); it also made sense to exult, even if with hyperbolic headlines”””al-Qaeda receives devastating blow–”by way of saying the noose is tightening around bin Laden, who was next.

However, with the killing of bin Laden””the snakes head, the face of terror, the heart of al-Qaeda””it is becoming a bit redundant for the administration to continue boasting over the killing of yet one more al-Qaeda member; just as it is redundant to continue asserting that al-Qaeda is on the “verge of defeat.”

After all, any number of analysts insisted that with the killing of bin Laden, al-Qaeda was as good as dead, thereby implying that whether this or that member gets killed is irrelevant. Peter Bergen, for example, declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now”¦. It’s time to move on.”

More to the point: the administration’s inordinate focus and optimism over the killing of the latest al-Qaeda member (one can place past and future names here ___) ultimately exposes its myopic approach””an approach that tries to localize the problem, to give it a face, to treat it as a temporal and tangible entity that can be defeated through arms.

The unfortunate fact is that, even if al-Qaeda were totally eradicated tomorrow, the terror threat to the West would hardly recede, since al-Qaeda has never been the source of the threat, but simply one of its manifestations….

Read the rest.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: al-Qaeda, Ottoman Empire


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