Simon W. Moon said:
Care to share your evidence that the US Intel Community is getting this one wrong?
Evidence? Don't insult me. The Intel community deal in numbers, but they also deal in common sense. This is the type of evidence that numbers will not show. I am currently stationed at a higher HQ (underneath HQ Marine Corps) and I deal with this day in and day out. Moving on....
I don’t know what world some of you are watching on your television sets, but there has been no “success” for the terrorists. When people say that by killing terrorists we are only creating more terrorists, they are utterly wrong. This is sophomoric nonsense. There can be no doubt that Al-Queda recruitment has gone up, but we did not create these “soldiers for Allah.” They are products of a failing civilization and merely needed a nudge to get them in line. The truth of the matter is, that with every new “imagined” success that the terrorist have in so many different countries, they actually are creating enemies where before there were bystanders. The surest way to swell the ranks of terror is to follow the approach we did in the decade before 9/11 and do nothing of substance. Success breeds success. Everybody loves a winner. The cliches exist because they’re true. Al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups separated because they were viewed in the Muslim world as standing up to the West successfully and handing, the Great Satan America, embarrassing defeats with impunity. Some fanatics will flock to the standard of terror, no matter what we do. But it’s far easier for Islamic societies to purge themselves of terrorists if the terrorists are on the losing end of the global struggle than if they’re allowed to become triumphant heroes to every jobless, unstable teenager in the Middle East and beyond. Far worse than fighting such a war of attrition (more on this at your request) aggressively is to pretend you’re not in one while your enemy keeps on killing you. It is not a matter of whether attrition is good or bad. It’s necessary and it is world wide. It always has been.
9/11 was not a success for them. It was a dire mistake that awoke many and it was the most obvious example to date of how an “apocalyptic terrorist” always brings about his own demise. There are two different types of terrorist. The “Apocalyptic” always over reaches and destroys himself in the process.
The London bombings was to be an example of what allying with America will get you, but it backfired. Though there was a body count, Islamic leadership in the UK is now paying for their product and reeling from the consequences.
The Bali bombings (more on this at your request), while perceived by the world as a terrorist success, will probably mark the turning of the tide against terrorism in Indonesia. The terrorists in Indonesia, of which there are two distinct separate groups, bit off the hand that appeased them. Passivity in Indonesia has encouraged the extremists to believe that they could act with impunity. Now the terrorists have overreached, as their comrades did in New York and Washington. The crimes they committed on Bali were so ferocious that they cannot be denied or explained away by the Indonesian sponsership. More importantly, they were a severe embarrassment for the government and the country. Part of a desperate, world-wide attempt by Islamic terrorists to resume the offensive after the beating they've taken for the past year, these bombings brought global terrorism on a grand scale to Indonesia and it gave the agencies, that have been so far subdued by the appeasing government because they didn’t wish to antagonize them, a reason to act.
After the attacks in Jordan, angry Jordanians rallied outside one of three U.S.-based hotels attacked by suicide bombers, shouting, "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Death to Al-Zarqawi!” The Jordanians are now a new public enemy to them.
After suffering devastating losses around the world, Islamic terror networks are attempting to return to the offensive, to prove they are still viable. Their targets, throughout the decade before 9/11, were on military installations and personnel. The targets they have recently struck illuminate their weakness and rage, not an intelligent global strategy. Far from striking major governmental or military targets, the terrorists have been reduced to sloven assassinations and, now, the calculated mass murder of young people. Once again, the terrorists have chosen targets that strengthen the hands of their enemies.
For the human devils who planned the slaughters and carry out the attacks, these truly are suicide attacks. Don’t give them their imagined victories.
