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 . . . TERRORISM (2005) Terrorism succeeds when it understands that through its violent acts it has broken the will of individual citizens. I have already stated that we are at war with Bin Laden, and anyone who refuses to see it, preferring to negotiate and make pacts with terror, does nothing else but make more terror a certainty. To surrender without a fight can only cause the deaths of more victims, because terrorism gives no quarter. Islamic terrorism does not want a dialogue of civilizations, because its only goal is to impose its own on ours. Let's not forget it. --José María Alfredo Aznar López (1953— ) Spanish politician who served as Spanish prime minister [1996—2004]. - - Today, this editorial board resolves to sacrifice another word — "insurgent" — on the altar of precise language. No longer will we refer to suicide bombers or anyone else in Iraq who targets and kills children and other innocent civilians as "insurgents." The notion that these murderers in any way are nobly rising up against a sitting government in a principled fight for freedom has become, on its face, absurd. If they ever held a moral high ground, they sacrificed it weeks ago, when they turned their focus from U.S. troops to Iraqi men, women and now children going about their daily lives. They drove that point home with chilling clarity Wednesday in a poor Shiite neighborhood. As children crowded around U.S. soldiers handing out candy and toys in a gesture of good will, a bomb-laden SUV rolled up and exploded. These children were not collateral damage. They were targets. The SUV driver was no insurgent. He was a terrorist. [...] Words have meanings. Whether too timid, sensitive or "open-minded," we've resisted drawing a direct line between homicidal bombers everywhere else in the world and the ones who blow up Iraqi civilians or behead aid workers. No more. To call them "insurgents" insults every legitimate insurgency in modern history. They are terrorists. --editorial, _The Dallas Morning News_ [15 July 2005] - - It is becoming very clear that everybody on this planet is going to have to make a decision about terrorism, but there really are only three options. You can take a hard line, which is my position. You can appease terrorism, which is Spain's position. Or you can refuse to confront the issue at all. And unfortunately, millions of people are doing that. [...] Now here in the USA, we have people who have made a huge deal out of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the run up to the Iraq War, and other issues surrounding the terror war. In my opinion, some have lost sight of the real issue, because of the politics. With all due respect to the left wing in this country, when Islamic fascists are slaughtering civilians, I'm not sure the abuse at Abu Ghraib should be our main concern. All Americans should realize that mistakes are going to be made fighting a global war on terror, but we should also realize that if we don't aggressively fight it, more Americans will die in the streets. [...] Comes a time when you have to decide what's best for everyone. And there's no question that what is best for everyone in the world right now is to defeat Islamic fascism. You've got to stop the nonsense. --Bill O'Reilly "Talking Points Memo" [22 July 2005] - - In an effort to be culturally sensitive and almost compulsively polite, we've mangled the meanings of words like: "martyr," and "suicide" to such a degree that we're using them to label mass murderers. While American and foreign media collectively increase the suffering of babes through their current fashion of cynicism, others seem to have a case of "parents' guilt." Unable to give the Iraqi suffering the undivided and ameliorative attention it requires, reporters instead rush at any sign of distress and hyper-focus on the negative. In the process, they create more problems than originally existed, shoveling out body counts and masquerading them as reports. [...] Particularly among fanatics, there seems to be an intentional misappropriation of meaning in the liberal misapplication of labelling words. Let's start with the BIG ones: suicide-bombers and martyrs. Suicide is a term that should evoke empathy, if not sympathy, for a lonely and despairing act. A distressed soul, harboring a crushing, agonizing lebensmude, weary of the strain of a terrestrial existence, perhaps seeking mere relief, or just an end to psychic pain, may be contemplating suicide. If this person straps a bomb to his or her chest and walks out into the solitude of the desert and detonates, they would then be properly called a "suicide bomber." But when the media reports every day on "suicide bombers," they are talking about different people. A fanatic who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into a market crowded with women and children, then detonates a bomb that is sometimes laced with rat poison to hamper blood coagulation, is properly called a "mass murderer." There is nothing good to say about mass murderers, nor is there anything good to say about a person who encourages these murders. Calling these human bomb delivery devices "suicide bombers" is simply incorrect. They are murderers. A person or media source defending or explaining away the actions of the murderers supports them. There is no wiggle room. Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man "customer" because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. There's no need to whisper. I hear the bombs every single day. Not some days, but every day. We're talking about criminals who actually volunteer and plan to deliberately murder and maim innocent people. What reservoir of feelings or sensibilities do we fear to assault by simply calling it so? When murderers describe themselves as "martyrs" it should sound to sensible ears like a rapist saying, "she was asking for it." In other words, like the empty rationalizations of a depraved criminal. The word martyr is derived from the word "to witness." It is used to describe a person who is killed because of a belief or principle. Given the choice to recant, martyrs chose instead to face their murderers and stand in witness to their beliefs. True martyrs do not kill themselves, but stand their ground and fight in the face of death to demonstrate the power of their convictions, sometimes dying as a result, but preferably surviving. The only martyrs I know about in Iraq are the fathers and brothers who see a better future coming, and so they act on their beliefs and assemble outside police stations whenever recruitment notices are posted. They line up in ever increasing numbers, knowing that insurgents can also read these notices. The men stand in longer and longer lines, making ever bigger targets of themselves. Some volunteer to earn a living. This, too, is honorable. But others take these risks because they believe that a better future is possible only if Iraqi men of principle stand up for their own values, for their country, for their families. Theses are the true martyrs, the true heroes of Iraq and of Islam. I meet these martyrs frequently. They are brave men, worthy of respect. --Michael Yon "Battle For Mosul" -  . . Beheadings Become Tactic of Choice By Yochi J. Dreazen _The Wall Street Journal_ September 3, 2004 AMMAN, Jordan — Images of the videotaped execution of a Nepalese worker in Iraq, widely available on the Internet within hours of his murder this week, vividly illustrate that beheading has become the weapon of choice in the propaganda campaign insurgents are waging alongside their bloody guerrilla effort to drive the U.S. and its allies out of Iraq. The militants' calculation is a chillingly simple one: roadside bombs may kill small numbers of soldiers and contractors, but they don't give militants a forum for airing their political views or publicizing their demands on popular Arabic satellite-television stations like al-Jazeera. The beheading videos, by contrast, allow the militants to reach — and perhaps intimidate — a far wider audience over television and the Internet. As a result, the tactic has become the centerpiece of a sophisticated hearts-and-minds campaign being waged by the insurgents. Beheadings account for a small percentage of the foreign death toll in Iraq, but the killings receive enormous attention in the media because of their sheer savagery. The upshot is that as long as the beheadings continue to attract publicity, militants are likely to continue carrying them out. "The essence of terrorism is violence combined with communication," says Jerrold Post, a former Central Intelligence Agency psychiatrist who now heads the Political Psychiatry Program at George Washington University in Washington. "The beheadings are designed to intimidate and convey a broader message of coercion, and it's unfortunately a strategy that is very clearly working." Beyond the publicity, beheadings provide a second advantage for the insurgents: the mode of execution is discussed twice in the Quran, allowing to them to claim religious sanction for the murders. Chapter 47, verse 4, of the Quran says that "if you encounter the disbelievers in a battle, strike off their heads." It is also a method used in Saudi Arabia to execute convicted criminals. Many contemporary Muslim leaders, however, deride the possibility of any Quranic justification for the recent beheadings, noting that Islamic law bars the killing of innocents. The beheading of the Nepalese hostage was the latest in a string of similar killings that has sparked outrage around the world and led to a heated debate among Muslim clerics over the types of guerrilla tactics that are acceptable under Islamic law. The current spate of beheadings began with the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in early 2002. More recently, Paul Johnson, an American contractor in Saudi Arabia, was beheaded by militants there. [. . . ] The Internet has given the militants an even easier way to disseminate the imagery. By Tuesday evening, just hours after the videotaped beheading of the Nepalese man was released, a Google search brought up hundreds of sites with the grisly imagery. One site had a veritable library of beheadings, including those of Mr. Kim and Nicholas Berg, an American telecommunications engineer killed in Iraq earlier this year. [. . . ] . . There could hardly be a clearer case — of the ongoing revelations and the ongoing denial — than in the 13 points below, reproduced verbatim from a "Summary of Evidence" prepared by the U.S. government in November 2004. This unclassified document was released by the Pentagon in late March 2005. It details the case for designating an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an "enemy combatant." 1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades. 2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994. 3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban. 4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan. 5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000. 6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition. 7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members. 8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida. 9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997. 10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels. 11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars. 13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002. Interesting. What's more interesting: The alleged plot was to have taken place in August 1998, the same month that al Qaeda attacked two U.S. embassies in East Africa. And more interesting still: It was to have taken place in the same month that the Clinton administration publicly accused Iraq of supplying al Qaeda with chemical weapons expertise and material. But none of this was interesting enough for any of the major television networks to cover it. Nor was it deemed sufficiently newsworthy to merit a mention in either the Washington Post or the New York Times. The Associated Press, on the other hand, probably felt obliged to run a story, since the "Summary of Evidence" was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the AP itself. But after briefly describing the documents, the AP article downplayed its own scoop with a sentence almost as amusing as it is inane: "There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence." That sentence minimizing the importance of the findings was enough, apparently, to convince most newspaper editors around the country not to run the AP story. [...] Indeed, more than two years after the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted, there is much we do not know about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. We do know, however, that there was one. We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war — documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists. We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999. All of this is new — information obtained since the fall of the Hussein regime. And yet critics of the Iraq war and many in the media refuse to see it. [...] THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY was apparently not much concerned by Iraqi support for terrorism in the 13 years between the Gulf war and the Iraq war. To students of Iraq-U.S. relations that might seem bizarre. Saddam Hussein had used such asymmetric warfare for decades, against enemies foreign and domestic, real and imagined. What's more, he had demonstrated his willingness to use terrorism and terrorist surrogates against his enemies when confronted by superior conventional military forces during the Gulf war. By some accounts, more than 1,400 terrorists made their way to Baghdad in the final months of 1990 as he prepared to face the coalition assembled by the United States to oust him from Kuwait. He dispatched others to attack U.S. interests around the world. On January 18, 1991, one day after the Gulf war began, an Iraqi terrorist posing as a day laborer managed to plant 26 sticks of TNT in a flower box below a window of the U.S. ambassador's residence in Jakarta, Indonesia. The dynamite wasn't completely buried, and a gardener found it before the bomb exploded. The following day in the Philippines, two Iraqis blew themselves up in a plot known to CIA veterans as Operation Dogmeat, a botched attempt to bomb the U.S. Information Service headquarters at the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Manila. The failed attack on the U.S. government- run center received the active support of the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines. Saddam Hussein openly encouraged these attacks. "It remains for us to tell all Arabs, all militant believers . . . wherever they may be that it is your duty to embark on holy war. You should target their interests wherever they may be," he said on January 20, 1991. Iraq's use of terrorism was so widespread, in fact, that it became an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign, when Al Gore accused the first Bush administration of a "blatant disregard for brutal terrorism" practiced by Hussein and ignoring Iraq's "extensive terrorism activities." Many Islamic radicals voiced opposition to Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi was not one of them. Turabi's willingness to back Hussein gave the Iraqi dictator the Islamist street credibility he would exploit for years to come. In the debate over the former Iraqi regime's relationship with al Qaeda, it is often said that Saddam's secular Baathist regime could never work with Osama bin Laden's radical Islamist organization. It is a curious argument since Turabi, one of Saddam's staunchest allies, also happened to be one of the most influential Islamists of the past two decades. One of the principal architects of Sudan's Islamist revolution in 1989, Turabi was also the longtime mentor, friend, and host of Osama bin Laden during his stay in Sudan from 1992 until 1996. [...] An internal Iraqi Intelligence memo dated March 28, 1992, lists individuals Hussein's regime considered assets of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Osama bin Laden is listed on page 14. The Iraqis describe him as a Saudi businessman who "is in good relationship with our section in Syria." At the same time, the Iraqis were cultivating a relationship with Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the current top deputy to bin Laden. According to Qassem Hussein Mohammed, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi Intelligence, Zawahiri visited Baghdad in 1992 for a meeting with Hussein. In a 2002 interview with the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg from a Kurdish prison in northeastern Iraq, the IIS veteran described his duties as a bodyguard for Zawahiri during his visit. This was not Zawahiri's only meeting with top Iraqi officials. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi Intelligence official, Zawahiri met with Iraqi Intelligence officials in Sudan several times from 1992 to 1995. A foreign intelligence service has corroborated that report, adding that at one of those meetings Zawahiri received blank Yemeni passports from an Iraqi Intelligence official. In 1993, at Turabi's urging, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam Hussein that the al Qaeda leader and his followers would not engage in any anti-Hussein activities. The Clinton administration later included this development in its sealed indictment of bin Laden in 1998. According to the indictment: "Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq." --Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn, "The Mother of All Connections" _The Weekly Standard_ [18 July 2005] - - On Friday, the allegedly explosive "Arab street" finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa'eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. "Zarqawi," shouted 200,000 Jordanians, "from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!" Also "the enemy of Allah" — which, for a jihadist, isn't what they call on Broadway a money review. [...] True, he did manage to kill a couple of dozen Muslims. But what's the strategic value of that? Presumably, it's an old-fashioned mob heavy's way of keeping the locals in line. And that worked out well, didn't it? Hundreds of thousands of Zarqawi's fellow Jordanians fill the streets to demand his death. Did they show that on the BBC? Or are demonstrations only news when they're anti-Bush and anti-Blair? And look at it this way: if the "occupation" is so unpopular in Iraq, where are the mass demonstrations against that? I'm not talking 200,000, or even 100 or 50,000. But, if there were just 1,500 folks shouting "Great Satan, go home!" in Baghdad or Mosul, it would be large enough for the media to do that little trick where they film the demo close up so it looks like the place is packed. Yet no such demonstrations take place. Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He's a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an "exit strategy". In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop. --Mark Steyn (1959— ) Canadian journalist. "Listen to the word on the 'Arab street' " [21 November 2005] end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM | ISRAEL - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | |
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