The Unraveling

The New Republic ^ | May 26, 2008 | Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank

[Nony]

The jihadist revolt against bin Laden.

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since Al Qaeda had moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Benotman, the scion of an aristocratic family marginalized by Qaddafi, had known bin Laden from their days fighting the Afghan communist government in the early '90s, a period when Benotman established himself as a leader of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

The night of Benotman's arrival, bin Laden threw a lavish banquet in the main hall of his compound, an unusual extravagance for the frugal Al Qaeda leader. As bin Laden circulated, making small talk, large dishes of rice and platters of whole roasted lamb were served to some 200 jihadists, many of whom had come from around the Middle East. "It was one big reunification," Benotman recalls. "The leaders of most of the jihadist groups in the Arab world were there and almost everybody within Al Qaeda."

[gusopol3]

nothing surprising here about the big picture. the fear that Iraq would be a breeding ground for terrorists, when all that could be seen was slaughter of innocents and self-slaughter has always been a shibboleth of the leftists and their policy proxies, Scowcroft, Odom, Armitage, etc. The whole movement is being degraded by Bush’s steadfastness, though the cost is very high.

[wildbill]

A glimpse of a silver lining in the WOT.

[MissionMan]

Ping for later reading

[ghost of nixon]

Thanks to GWB - all through this article it was apparent that the pressure applied to al Quaeda and jihadists by the U.S. has caused them get more and more deperate, and basically discredit themselves and their caise in the process.

[kalee]

bttt

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP

[Paladin2]

Hey Slick,

You better put some ice on that.

[A_perfect_lady]

That was fascinating. Equally amazing is how little of this information is part of the WOT discourse in the US. It may be that Bush was right all along in his “hearts and minds” campaign. Let’s hope so.

[ScreamingFist]

Good read, thanks for the post.

[Wuli]

The war in Iraq against Al Queda has been a cathartic but necessary endeavor, in which the true and bloody face of Al Queda has been brutally witnessed by the people, demonstrating the myth and the lie in the “Arab Street” about Al Queda’s intentions, about how they would rule if they could.

The cost has been high but the long term value will be worth it - Al Queda is showing itself as the enemy of Arabs and Muslims.

[AprilfromTexas]

for later

[happygrl]

Important post. Thanks.

[Lancey Howard]

Pinging to this truly excellent read about the jihadists and the WOT.

[xzins]

"The starting point has to be that jihad is legitimate, otherwise no one will listen, " says Benotman

This appears to me to be the most significant statement for the USA. It is failure that has them rethinking their current strategy. The proper way to think about his article is "Since this strategy is losing the people, then we declare this strategy to be wrong."

No one is saying that the act of murdering innocent civilians is wrong. The difference between a soldier and a terrorist is that the terrorist intentionally targets innocents as part of his strategy. A soldier targets the enemy's military and military capabilities.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[jazusamo]

Good piece, thanks for the post and ping.

[SunkenCiv]

I think this is a duplicate, but I’m going to bed without checking. G’night all.

[Fred Nerks]

All this has created a dawning recognition among Muslims that the ideological virus that unleashed September 11 and the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid is the same virus now wreaking havoc in the Muslim world.

Yep, things are looking up -the muslims are afraid of their own fanatics.

[PGalt]

Most of these clerics and former militants, of course, have not suddenly switched to particularly progressive forms of Islam or fallen in love with the United States (all those we talked to saw the Iraqi insurgency as a defensive jihad), but their anti-Al Qaeda positions are making Americans safer. If this is a war of ideas, it is their ideas, not the West's, that matter. The U.S. government neither has the credibility nor the Islamic knowledge to effectively debate Al Qaeda's leaders, but the clerics and militants who have turned against them do. Juan Zarate, a former federal prosecutor and a key counterterrorism adviser to President Bush, acknowledged as much in a speech in April when he said, "These challenges from within Muslim communities and even extremist circles will be insurmountable at the end of the day for Al Qaeda."

The greatest anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-individual, anti-life collective in the history of civilization DOES NOT HAVE 1 MEMBER WHO HAS AN IDEA THAT INTERESTS ME.