Friday, September 9, 2011

Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brothers since 9/11

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-sept11-alqaeda-future-idUSTRE7881DS20110909

Mark Hosenball of Reuters writes,

“Al Qaeda's core leadership is badly wounded and almost certainly incapable of mounting another attack like the one on September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, according to U.S. and European security officials.

“But even as the threat of spectacular, coordinated mass-casualty attacks by al Qaeda seems to have faded, it has been replaced by new worries -- the network's violent spinoff groups and individual radical "lone wolves," to name two.”. . .

"AQ Central has never been weaker, they have been pounded into submission" by CIA drone attacks, said Roger Cressey, a former top White House counterterrorism official, referring to al Qaeda by its initials. . . .”

“A worrisome development is the proliferation of individual violent militants -- the "lone wolves" -- who operate unseen by intelligence agencies and police and can create mayhem with a carful of home-made explosives or guns. The result is a lower risk of future large conflagrations but a growing threat of smaller attacks that could be harder to detect and thwart.”

COMMENT: I don’t agree that the “proliferation of individual violent militants” is a new “development” if that is what is being implied. Khomeini discussed this sort of thing years ago. He didn’t want to give names to militant groups. Groups with names and organizations could more readily be coopted. He had the Muslim Brothers as an example of that. They became much less militant through their efforts to be recognized as non-threatening in Egypt. They claim (in private) to have the same goals, but the more militant activists don’t believe them.

Also, In an editorial earlier this year entitled “Obama and the Muslim Brothers” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/30/obama-and-the-muslim-brothers/ a Washington Times representative writes, “The administration is reaching out to Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September. “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing,” an unnamed White House source told Politico. “It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.” As President Obama’s previous attempts at outreach to Islamists have failed, there is little reason to believe this effort will succeed. . . .”

“The White House appears to be blind to the schizophrenic message it is broadcasting throughout the Middle East. Mr. Obama says he wants to improve relations with Islam, yet he supports policies that offend orthodox Muslim morality.”

COMMENT: One can hardly blame Obama for recognizing that the real power in the Middle East is with radical Muslims. Maybe the “orthodox” Muslims are offended, but some of us have been offended by their unwillingness to deal with or ever challenge radical Islam. And didn’t Jimmy Carter, of whom it was said that he never met an authoritarian ruler he didn’t like, set the pattern for this?

Apparently Obama is still reaching out to the Muslim Brothers inasmuch as they were invited to the National Cathedral 9/11 program. The most popular Christian denomination in the U.S.(Baptist) is publicizing the fact that while the Muslim Brothers were invited by Obama, it was not.

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