Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Another Top Jihadi Sent to Paradise

The BBC reports that yet another top aide to Abu al Zarqawi has been dispatched to frolic with his 72 virgins:

United States officials say Iraqi forces have killed a senior aide to the militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Officials said Abu Zubair was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, in an ambush set by Iraqi forces.

He had been wanted for his alleged role in several attacks, including a attack on a police station in Mosul last month, which killed five policemen.

No other details of the operation were provided, and there is no independent confirmation of the US statement.

Maybe next time it will be the psychopath-in-chief himself who gets sent off to his reward.

The Seven Phases

Al Qaida has a twenty year plan for establishing a worldwide caliphate and The Fourth Rail has the details and commentary:

Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

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."

Al Qaeda can claim some success in the First Phase, as the organization is now the preeminent terrorist organization on the planet. The attacks of September 11 were cheered throughout the Islamic world. The global media disseminates Al Qaeda commander's speeches. Each and every terrorist attack is followed by suspicious of al Qaeda involvement. And the US did indeed bring the war to the Islamic world in Afghanistan and Iraq, however not against Islam itself. But this came at a price, as Islamist Afghanistan and friendly Saddam-governed Iraq were lost.

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.

So far, the Second Phase has been a failure. The Arab and greater Islamic Street has been essentially silent in its support of al Qaeda. The perception that al Qaeda's cause is popular as hundreds of Islamists enter Iraq monthly is overshadowed by the tens of thousands of Islamic fighters who enter Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. al Qaeda has generated new recruits, but not nearly enough to replace the experienced operators and managers that have been lost under the American onslaught in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Winning the Second Phase is important from an ideological standpoint. Defeat in Iraq would seriously harm the credibility of al Qaeda and weaken their mystique. They would possess a losing ideology that could not stand up to the Great Satan. Allah would have abandoned them to the privations of the infidel.

The rest of the plan can be read at the link. Roggio finishes with this:

Phases Five, Six and Seven are merely the dreams of al Qaeda, as the prospects for al Qaeda's success in phases One thru Fourth are looking grim at the moment. Despite media portrayal of defeat in Iraq, the Iraqi people are fighting the insurgency and the Anbar region is set to be reduced as an al Qaeda rear area. The jewel of al Qaeda, Afghanistan, fell almost four years ago, and al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have not come even close to retaining control. There are rumors of a serious rift between al Qaeda and the Taliban, as the Taliban believes its woes were created by closely allying themselves with Osama's cause.

However, in the event of the United State loses its political will and pursues a policy of isolation from the Muslim world, an inevitable showdown with al Qaeda would ensue. Open confrontation with the West, as well as the possibility of a nuclear armed Caliphate, would bring the full military might of the Western World (those who value their freedom). The current operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Southeast and Central Asia and within the borders of Western nations would be tame in comparison to what would come. The Japanese, Germans and Italians discovered in World War II the price of wakening the American military psyche.

The West would basically have two options: (1) blitzkrieg 21st Century style - the full mobilization of its military and an accompanying sweep of the Islamic crescent, without regards for Politically Correct warfare; (2) nuclear war. Both campaigns would be designed to fully eliminate the Islamist threat, and the Muslim infrastructure, which allowed for the rise of al Qaeda's ideology.

Whatever happens, the American people have to be prepared for a long, drawn out conflict. One of the Bush administration's real failings in the current war has been, in our opinion, its failure to keep the eye of the American people focussed on the task of defeating terrorism. They've given us the perception that they're disengaged, that the war is just a side-show to our everyday lives rather than an all-out struggle for the survival of Western civilization. As a result, they've pretty much ceded the battle for people's hearts and minds to the Cindy Sheehans and Chris Matthews of the world.

The war has to be fought not only abroad but also here at home. The administration must repeatedly remind us why we are fighting, what our soldiers are dying for, what the stakes are, and what sort of progress is being made. If they expect the American people to be patient they have to show us the goal and continually update us on our progress toward that goal, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but everywhere the war is being fought. To do less is to risk conveying the impression that what our military is doing is not all that crucial or important and that its time to disengage from a conflict which, for all the White House is telling us, we're not really winning.

Stemming the Tide

Michelle Malkin has a lot of links and other worthwhile stuff on what is probably conservatives' biggest disappointment with the Bush administration, its failure to control our borders.

If the Democrats want a winning issue in '06 and '08 there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who would vote for anyone who campaigns on stopping the flood of illegal aliens pouring into this country every day. The GOP, which has been absolutely delinquent on this issue, would find any credible candidate who promised to put a stop to it tough to beat.

Bias Against Roberts

Laer has 32 examples of media bias in their reporting on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. It's an imposing list.

The Origin of Life

This is an interesting development in the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

Maybe Liu is correct, but one difficulty his team is going to have to overcome, if they're going to show that no intelligent designer was necessary for biogenesis, is designing experiments that show how life could have originated without introducing into those experiments any trace of human intelligence. It'll be a nifty trick if they can pull it off.

The attempt, though, is quite a gamble. If they succeed, their work would be a severe and possibly fatal blow to Intelligent Design theory. If, on the other hand, they fail, their inability to explain how life could have evolved naturalistically will greatly strengthen the argument of those who say that however life came to be, it could not have happened through purely mechanistic processes.