al Qaeda continues to dispense terror to the people of the Muslim world using the tool they have mastered: the suicide bomb. A day following the horrific attack on Iraqi children in Baghdad that killed 24 children and wounded and maimed scores, further attacks using suicide bombs are conducted.
Al Qaeda obviously believes the tactic of using suicide bombs against civilian targets is working, but they fail to properly gauge the impact of their gruesome methods. John Tabin of The American Spectator brings to light a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project that should give the jihadis pause (hat tip Instapundit). Support for Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings are plummeting throughout the Muslim world. Mr. Tabin neatly summarizes the data.
Support, among Muslims, for suicide bombing against civilians has also faded. (Only Muslims were asked this question.) The percentage saying the practice is “never justified” jumped since March 2004 from 35 to 46 in Pakistan and from 38 to 79 in Morocco, and jumped since the summer of 2002 (the last time the question was asked in these countries) from 54 to 66 in Indonesia and from 12 to 33 in Lebanon. (The Turks held stable on the issue, with 66% saying suicide bombing is “never justified,” statistically identical to the 67% who gave that answer in March 2004.) Most interestingly, opposition to suicide bombings in Iraq specifically was higher, in several countries, than opposition to suicide bombing in general; 56% of Pakistanis and 41% of Lebanese oppose that “insurgent” tactic, along with 43% in Jordan, where only 11% oppose suicide bombing in general (and by “general,” obviously, they mean “Israel”).
This should come as no surprise, as al Qaeda has directed most of its mass casualty attacks against the Muslim world. Muslims who to not adhere to the strict and oppressive brand of the Salafi/Wahabi Islam are demeaned worthy of death. Women and children are not excluded, and are often targeted in mosques. Deroy Murdock documents the mosque attacks in Afghanistn and Iraq (hat tip Joe Katzman):
In Afghanistan:
- June 1, 2005: A suicide bomber blasted the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a moderate cleric, at his eponymous mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He killed Kabul’s police chief and 20 others, while wounding 50.
- January 20, 2005: A suicide bomber exploded inside the Ghocha Park Mosque in Sheberghan, injuring 21, six reportedly in critical condition.
- January 16, 2005: An anti-personnel mine went off at the Sal Metra mosque in Urozgan province, wounding two worshippers.
- June 30, 2003: An earlier bombing at Fayaz’s mosque injured 16.
In Iraq:
- May 23, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque killed two and wounded 22, including 11 children.
- May 19, 2005: A bomb at a Saydiya mosque killed two and hurt five.
- April 22, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque disrupted Friday prayers, killing nine and wounding 26.
- March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber detonated himself during a funeral at a Mosul mosque, murdering 47 people and injuring at least 101.
- February 18, 2005: On Ashoura, Shiites’ holiest day, homicide bombers attacked two Baghdad mosques, killing 25 and wounding 30.
- February 18, 2005: A car bomb killed eight and hurt 10 at an Iskandariyah mosque.
- August 26, 2004: Mortar shells pummeled a Najaf mosque, leaving 27 dead and 63 injured.
- March 2, 2004: Homicide bombers, mortars, and hidden explosives at mosques in Baghdad and Karbala killed 181 and wounded 573 Ashoura worshippers.
Add the 386 killed and 970 injured in Iraq to the Afghan figures above: The terrorist pals of Guantanamo’s al-Qaeda and Taliban residents have butchered 407 Muslims and injured 1,059 more in these mosque attacks alone.
- August 29, 2003: A car bomb outside a Najaf mosque killed 85 and injured 140.
When Muslims watch al Qaeda murder their own women and children and destroy their places of worship, they will naturally begin to question the methods and ideology of al Qaeda. This is a major facet of the ideological struggle against al Qaeda. Direct engagement in the Middle East forces al Qaeda to expose their true nature. As they are unsuccessful at dislodging American forces with suicide tactics, they are forces to hit softer targets - places where women, children, the infirm - all fellow Muslims gather.
al Qaeda has a problem. As it is unable to successfully engage America (or even local Muslim nations) in open combat, it must resort to the tactics of terror. Al Qaeda has perfected the design and use of the suicide bomb, which are now placed on cars, trucks, tractors, canines, boats and airplanes.
The purpose of suicide bombs is to instill fear and despair among those “collaborating” with the West. As the polling shows, the opposite result is achieved. But you don’t need to look at polling data to see that Muslims are beginning to question the purpose of the Islamists.
Hassan Mohammed, whose 13-year-old son Alaa also died, swore at insurgents for attacking civilians. "Why do they attack our children? They just destroyed one US Humvee, but they killed dozens of our children," he said as women screamed, slapped their faces and beat themselves over the head. "What sort of a resistance is this? It's a crime," he added.
I think this is really huge. I think that this is the first really solid evidence that not only is the War on Terror a winnable war, but that the tactics that we are using to fight it are suitable (if probably not optimal). Granted, the small shifts in opinion shown in some of the core terror enabling countries show that we've got a long road ahead of us, but seeing shifts in key mental battlefields like Pakistan cannot be construed as anything but a very good thing.
I've always believed that the War on Terror was at its heart an Islamic civil war that had spilled over on to, and in many cases been deliberately foisted on, the West. As long as the terror war was going on abstractly somewhere else were some easily villified group was dying, it could be ignored. This goes equally true for Americans looking abstractly at the Middle East and watching people suffer, and Moslems looking abstractly at the world outside and watching non-Moslems die. As long as it was someone else's problem it could be ignored, and many of the Middle Eastern governments deliberately exported terror in some fashion in large part simply to keep the trouble makers occupied elsewhere. Certainly that was the relationship between Saudia Arabia and Al Queda until recently.
By moving the war back within its natural geographic confines, and forcing the Arab and Islamic worlds to deal with the terrorists not in idealized abstraction but in the real everyday nature of thier thuggery, it's forced the Islamic world to reconsider whether the moral character of the terrorists really is what they've allowed themselves to believe that it is. The Islamic world has up until now fooled itself into believe that the bloodshed and butchery was perpetrated by individuals who were somehow noble, in much the same way I suppose as during hard economic times in US history (the 1870's, the 1930's) bank robbers were idealized as heroic, or bandito's were romanticized in Mexican culture. Jesse James and John Dillenger aren't heroic, and yet even they do not hold a candle to the sort of thugs and butchers that 50 years of glorifying a particular sort of spectacular and grotesque murder has produced in the middle east.
The case is often made by opponents of the war in Iraq and the war on terror in general, that by fighting the terrorists under the paradim of warfare that we are just making them stronger. This argument has always failed the common sense test since its ultimately based on creating mythic figures endowed with superhuman qualities out of the terrorists, but now we have some pretty concrete evidence that its not the case. The societies that they depend upon for support are being turned against the terrorists, less because of anything we've done than the simple fact that we've forced the terrorists to fight on our terms rather than allowing the terrorists to dictate the tempo of the fight and more importantly the debate over the character of the fight.
We've put the real ambitions and character of the terrorists on display to the whole world, and it isn't pretty. This matters far more than whether we've also made ourselves look less pretty, because the 'muhajideen' was far more romanticized and sanitized in the Islamic word than 'the Great Satan' ever was.
OT - Kinda
In relation to the rash of suicide bombings in Iraq, could there possibly be a correlation between someone fairly high on the Zarqawi food chain being captured and a "self destruct" order then being issued for the exposed cells?
It would seem suicide bombings began to skyrocket after Zarqawi's computer was captured in late April. It was released in the last couple of days that a Cell Leader in Baghdad was captured, now we have 8 suicide bombers in one day in Baghdad.
Just a passing thought....
Stupid. If they'd stuck to killing kufr...
But, to quote the late lamented Allahpundit, the whole point was to kill muslims. They have always excelled at killing muslims. They have killed relatively few kuffars, but they have killed thousands and thousands of muslims.
It was easy for the Arab world to paper over the killing of Muslims, as long as it wasn't their Muslims. Now, it isn't so easy.
I'm almost afraid to post at such an erudite site..but here goes anyway.
I hope Osama doesn't hear this news. As I understand it aren't Osama and al-Zawahiri having a difference of opinion as to where to focus their attacks? Osama wants al Qaeda to hit the West. Zawahiri thinks it best to stick to their muslim world for now.
Not that either would give up the fight in Iraq.
But, well, this shift in muslim opinion would give Osama all he needs to put Zawahiri in his place.
So the bumper sticker reads "Support our troops by bringing them home and ending the war" to which I would like to append "and submitting by embracing Islam, but which denomination are you supposed to join not to get killed?"
It's Time to Stick It to the Enemy in the GWOT!
Bill and others,
I believe you all are on the right track. It's fascinating to watch as a group consensus seems to be evolving across the political Blog sites. Others are starting to come to similar conclusions about what the cause is and what needs to be done to win the GWOT (Un PC - Islamofascism).
The secret is we must know our enemy and the ideology that drives it. We need to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. We need to drive a stake literally through the very heart of the enemy (e.g. the Mad Mullahs of Iran would be a close first) and wipe this cult-like religious ideology that evolved from the sands of the Arabian and North African deserts from the face of the earth.
This ideology has been brought to our world by the radical madrasses of this movement by the oil money of the House of Saud. This is the key nexus of this mess that we have ignored for all too long because of our multiculturism, political correctness, and tolerance of other religions and cultures. The enemy is exploiting this strength of the American society. It's time we awoke and ram this back down their throats.
It's time we take notice and recognize this for what it really is. Metaphorically, this evil and the Devil have been staring us in the face but we were too blind to see. For fans of the Ring Triology they are similarities both here and with the rise of the Third Reich. Tolkien denied it but I believe he was foretelling the evil that was rising in the world with the Third Reich.
This message was just sent home by the recent bombings in London. These were no foreign grown terrorists on some mission to right wrongs of the past. These were youths from our own culture. Our disaffected youth are being drawn into this cult that is no different than those of David Koresch, the Cool-Aid folks of Jim Jones, the KKK and our own white supremist movements. The only difference is they are better funded, thank you, the House of Saud.
Read further on this over at Robert L. Simon's. Scroll down the thread and follow the links in the comments. Read Dan Darling's piece here at WOC on Dr. Ledeen's most recent article in the NRO and the real connection between the Iranian theocracy and the enemy:
RLS Link
It's time that we all suck it up, put down our coffee lattes' and engage the enemy. We can leave the LL and the MSM to their naval gazing. They're mostly worthless anyway. The LL and the MSM have spun off into some self-flagellating crying jag. We have nothing to apologize for and this is no time for apologists. The Euro weenies can shove it. Besides they were on the take in the Oil for Food scandal anyway. They're pond scum. We are doing the right thing and President Bush is right, "We must stay the course." It's no time to pack it in and run. It will only get worse.
It may be trite but this is truly a war of Good vs. Evil.
All who would appease or offer apologies only empower and embolden the enemy. Have we not learned anything from history? Please go read the writings of Victor Davis Hanson if you skipped history class to quickly get up to speed. No amount of rationalizing with this enemy will deter it from further killing the innocents and are brave men and women who are going into harm's way to defend our very way of life and what we hold most dear:
The Universal Truth of the Free Will of Men and Women
All that we value in Western Culture is the antithesis of this ideology of hate and evil whose core mission is to destroy us. Go read the sentencing transcript of the Shoe Bomber and his pronouncement he is at war with us even though facing a lifetime sentence [Here and Here]. If I'm not mistaken Reid hung out in London in the same radical mosques where the new bombers did. This programming runs very deep.
You can all help right now as key folks in the Blogos by delivering this message directly to the American people and the free world. The Blogos now has that power. We should use it for everything its worth.
First up are the Mad Mullahs of Iran who are on the verge of going nuclear. They can be disposed of by the Iranian people themselves who hate the Arabic minority that brought with them Islamofascism. There are great events in history now occurring in Iran but the MSM isn't reporting them. The Iranian people will do this if they believe they have the moral support of the free world.
You can convey this message. The Mullahs can't block or filter all of us. The Mullahs will melt just like the Wicked Witch of the East did in the Wizard of Oz in the intense light of the free world. I'm sure all are aware that the strategic consequences of this theocracy going nuclear will be unimaginable.
Go to Dr. Zin's site, the key Blogos' portal, in the battle for Iran and join the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom.
www.regimechangeiran.com
LGF just posted that the Dallas Morning News in an editorial has taken the position of calling these murders for what they really are:
TERRORIST and not some freedom fighters in a legitimate insurgency
Those who would deliberately kill women and children to terrorize have no place in modern society. They need to be driven back to the 12th Century from where they emerged. They have lost their right to exist.
Write letters to the OP-ED pages of your papers and demand that they take similar editorial positions that the Dallas Morning News has bravely led out with.
Folks it's time to realize this Country is at war:
We are at war with a very cunning, determined, patient, stateless and transnational enemy driven by and unified in a common bound of a cult-like religious ideology. This is a male dominated theocracy of hate and evil from the 12th Century whose stated mission is to destroy all of us - Islamofascism.
[...]
This ideology is not unlike the other failed ideologies that have been discarded into history's dustbin e.g., Nazism, Communism, and Fascism. These ideologies couldn't provide for the needs and wants of the people. They failed to provide an equitable distribution of resources and wealth among the people. The key failure is they do not recognize the fundamental truth of the free will of men and women. In particular, the Achilles Heel of Islamofacisim is its failure to recognize the importance of women.
[...]
Not until we crush and wipe this ideology from the face of the earth will this war be over.
AND MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA
[of course god of your choosing or not. Just not one that doesn't advocate the murder of innocents and children]
OK I rest my case. The site marshals can come find me. I'm done. Either wake up or you will be soon dead.
I get the feeling that al Qaeda's suicide bomb campaign is much more closely related to their desire for martyrdom than it is to any strategic objective. Put simply, they like to blow themselves up, and look for any excuse to do so. They'll probably continue the campaign even if it doesn't further their aims. Maybe especially if it doesn't further their aims.
Ernst Blofeld, I agree with you. Scorpions will sting, and terrorist will terrorise. It's their nature. But I don't think that's the main point.
It's confidence in Osama bin Laden that is for the moment fading - to varying extents, and in some countries, since many important ones are not surveyed. Confidence.
It seems to me Osama bin Laden is not providing sufficient proof that he is master of the necks of infidels. Mainly, he cannot bend the stiff neck of the stubborn George W. Bush.
My take: "'Strong horse' starts to fade in the stretch."
Good news. Tomorrow's wrapping for fish and chips, of course, but for today - good news.
And this is where the idea of sanitizing war fails most utterly. Public opinion turned in the VietNam from pictures of My Lai, Tet, a Saigon execution, and the napalm girl.
One televised gunshot brought down Somoza.
We should be blanketing the airwaves with photos and film of these atrocities. Instead we let our opponents have a clear field. Let the MoveOn folks spend their time answering why they support people who blow the legs of little girls. Let the ACLU explain why people who take no prisoners are entitled to be treated according to the rules they ignore. Run their tape of them killing aid workers and election officials.
But no. Instead, we are defined by some stupid photos from some stupid prison guards.
"[al Qaeda] fail[ed] to properly gage [sic] the impact of their gruesome methods."
Huh? It's probably correct that the bad guys didn't figure on becoming less popular, but what evidence is there that the bad guys care about popularity?
Gauge the impact?
Everything I've read suggests that the primary "impact" sought by these killers is to kill other people who do not share their beliefs... Killing is the goal, the end, and you "gauge the impact" when you show up on the other side and find out how many slaves you've got for eternity...
We Americans flip-flop between two notions: first, that the "other" is nothing like us at all... the Russians like communism, the Arabs want the twisted sexuality that results from stifling religious/tribal controls, the Central Americans are best suited for oligarchy, and so on... and second, that the "other" is just like us! So... all we have to do is eliminate the Central Committee/Saddam/Somoza and a thousand flowers of tolerance/enlightenment/democracy will bloom... Bush's great and difficult task has been to manage the tension between these notions: Iraqis are enough like us to want to be in charge of their own destiny, on a personal level... Iraqis are enough different than us to tacitly support/avoid suppressing suicide bombers whose sole aim to to die and to kill in support of some version of the traditional regime...
It's a tough job and we all must be on guard to avoid slipping into the "just like us" trap... as I think Roggio has done here, suggesting that public opinion polls are a relevant metric to the suicide bomber...
I'm not saying they care about being popular, but Osama believed that inciting a war with American would fuel Muslim anger against the US. It ain't happening.
As far as you last point, I am not sure what you are trying to say, perhaps you should clarify. I'll try and answer what I think you are saying:
The Muslim world has been far to acceptant of terrorism, and still are. But once exposed to terrorism first hand, we are seeing signs of change. Iraqis have cursed the "resistance", provide numerous tips on their location and have fought them on the streets. I'll call that progress.
#12 Kevin
Go Kevin you do "Get it!"
Please now faster, faster, faster - please go tell or email everyone you can find what you know and link where you can back to this message!
That's how we will crush this "turd" [LL and MSM] clogging the toilet blocking the free flow of information vital to the American people.
Our goal is to reach "critical mass" in the Blogos to start a chain of events to topple the Iranian theocracy and onto crushing the enemy and wiping its ideology of hate and evil from the face of the earth. It is then and only then will the GWOT be won.
Not bad Heh!
I'm not saying they care about being popular, but Osama believed that inciting a war with American would fuel Muslim anger against the US. It ain't happening.
Huh. In what world do you live.
It's not difficult to understand why Muslims now seem opposed to suicide bombers. When only Westerners were being killed it was a perfectly acceptable practice. Now, with Muslims being killed right and left, it's not.
The real battle in this war is for the will of the American people.
Thus pr counts.
When Osama was a builder of roads and a funder of schools he was sort of OK. Now he is popularly seen as the man behind the killing of Iraqi children en mass. In America he is not doing well at all.
Then add in that the places he must recruit from are turning away from him he has got a problem. Maybe more than one.
How about tracking back to my post as well. Jawas rock? Pretty please.
Bill said:
I'm not saying they care about being popular, but Osama believed that inciting a war with American would fuel Muslim anger against the US. It ain't happening.
a said:
Huh. In what world do you live.
Bill's point is valid if you define "anger" as willing to go out and take action beyond the routine burning of a Bush effigy, or anti-American riot in the Arab street...which is certainly the context in which he was refering to it. Who cares if some Islamic fundementalist in the Hindu Kush curses Bush while tending to his flock. He's discussing the objective of Osama bin Laden to incite anger and hatred and turn this war into a clash of civilizations.
The jihad, while deadly, has gone over like a lead balloon in Iraq. There's an estimated what, 750 to 1,000 foreign fighters (compared to 125,000 in Soviet occupied Afghanistan) and we're talking about a U.S. military action into the heart of Arabia. In a region with billions of Muslims, Bin Laden's calls to eradicate the great Satan have largely fallen upon deaf ears.
#19 Howie
Howie wanted links back to The Jawa Report on related discussions. I think these are the ones he wanted:
Annoying Another Terrorist
and
Sources of Homicidal Angst: The "Sodatic Zone" (Updated)
And while I'm at it in my post above the link to the full transcript of the sentencing of Shoebomber was bad. Here's the link to the transcript which is definitely a good read. As I mentioned Reid was a convert to Islam and was hanging out at the radical mosques in London:
Judge Young's sentencing remarks to Reid
Most of the Arab anti-American feeling has been due to either of two things, the belief that America wants colonies in the way that Britain and France had them or the belief by intellectuals educated in the West that America is an evil force in the world.
Of course, neither is really true, but they are useful in portraying the jihadists as freedom fighters.
The war in Iraq was and is a gamble that our actions would eventually prove louder that words. It appears to be working to discredit both the imperialist label of America and the righteous jihad claim of the dead-enders.
The speed of American aid to the survivors of the tsunami had a lot to do with the change of opinion in Southeast Asia. The change in the Arab world probably stems from the January 31 election. No matter what the voiceover on Al Jazeera said, those smiling women holding up their inked fingers said more.
This is why the left in the West is not only wrong in its continued cavilling about this war, but is positively harmful to the future of the middle east and the GWOT. When I hear one of these lefties sneer that nobody can challenge his patriotism, I think "Lack of patriotism isn't a disqualifier, but stupidity is."
The war in Iraq was and is a gamble that our actions would eventually prove louder that words. It appears to be working to discredit both the imperialist label of America and the righteous jihad claim of the dead-enders.
:-)
The words of the US were noble but the actions it did proved that the US was there to colonize. Only the blood and heroism of the Iraqi people foiled the plan.