Making Sense of Jihad

A Silly Season of Conventional Wisdom

Last week President Obama noted that Bin Laden’s latest video was a sign of the group’s weakness.  Of course, former President Bush said the same thing for years.  To be fair, President Obama is simply echoing the current “Beltway” wisdom, embodied in the ironically named blog, Outside the Beltway:

Presuming that Osama is still alive and the tape is genuine, it’s quite interesting that he’s now reduced to bragging about horribly botched operations to bolster his credibility.

This post at Politics Daily is a good compilation of the profound analytical wisdom of the season:

The Associated Press quoted a senior U.S. intelligence official as saying there is "no evidence whatsoever" that bin Laden had any involvement in the bombing plot or even know about it in advance. Abdulmutallab told federal agents after his capture that he had been equipped with the explosives and trained by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Pensinsula.

Predictions of al-Qaida’s decline come and go with the seasons, but there are so many horrible flaws in this “conventional wisdom” here that it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll pick two:

1) It was a “failed” attack:

Osama bin Laden has claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of a Northwest airliner on Christmas. That's not surprising, but what should be is that it took him nearly a month to do so. Either it took all of that time for news of the plan to reach him, or he's lying. And if he's lying, we need to consider that the man is completely irrelevant.

So op sec can't explain it, Bob? Really?  Bin Laden could just have easily known about the plot all along. It took a while for a messenger to reach him. He then had to compose a message, record it, and have the courier deliver the message to Al-Jazeera.  It was released along with another message to the American people.  Couldn't he have been doing a few media "appearances" simultaneously?

In reality it wasn’t a failed attack.  It was a wild success, and is probably a new inspiration for those working toward an even wilder success. A terrorist’s primary means of creating terror is to employ the element of surprise.  They do this by undermining an adversary’s defenses.  Ninety percent of al-Qaida’s operational planning against US targets consists of finding ways of defeating our defenses.  Defeating an adversary’s defenses is one way of “striking terror” their hearts even when no boom is heard. 

Al-Qaida broke through our defenses on December 25, 2009, and quite easily, by the way.  For Bin Laden and Zawahiri it was a spectacular success. 

2) Bin Laden (aka "al-Qaida central") had nothing to do with the plot, or as Max Fisher notes:

The Flight 253 attacker was guided by officials from the Yemen-based offshoot of al-Qaeda; experts have long presumed that bin Laden is either hiding out in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region or is in fact dead.

Why? Because it was perpetrated by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), supposedly a “largely independent” affiliate.  Really?  Largely independent?  What does that mean?  From the beginning AQAP has had direct and substantial connections to its central leadership.  Its founder - Yusuf al-Uyyeri – sought Zawahiri’s approval of a plot to set off a poison gas in the NYC subway in 2003.  It was a private audio by Zawahiri  -- asking for money -- found on an AQAP operative in Saudi Arabia in 2008.  AQAP is al-Qaida.

I wish I could end this rant on a positive note, but I see the Beltway conventional wisdom working its delusional magic in the face of a looming threat.  For a brief moment after 9-11, the Beltway wisdom was on the ball.  But 9-11 was a long, long time ago in Beltway years, and it's so much easier to just sleep.

Around the Web: "Intelligence Failure" Edition

These past few weeks have seen an avalanche of annoying second guessers, awkward mea culpas and an insidious slow-bleed of embarrassing information on bureaucratic missteps preceding AQAP's failed operation against Flight 253.  If you google "intelligence failure" at google news you can see how this is playing out in the American media.  Not pretty.

The poor folks at Waq-al-Waq have been paddling upstream against a current of idiocies.  They deserve a round of applause.

My favorite report of the Flight 253 cycle comes via FoxNews.  Is it accurate?  I have no idea.  Is it plausible?  Oh, hell, yes!

In the end, it was the usual bureaucratic nonsense that happen here, not a failure of "proper analysis" (whatever that is).

Lost in the cacophony of Flight 253 hysterics, was a recent Playboy article that explores another massive intelligence failure, albeit a woefully under-covered intelligence failure.  Back in December 2003 the entire IC was jacked up on a perplexing threat.  I can remember various high-level meetings and briefings, and a general sense of doom around the office.  Well, Playboy Magazine, has an article on the massive intelligence failure that precipitated that moronic slip into hysterics. Warning: it is a Playboy article and probably won't make it past employer internet filters.  Open it at home.

For a good laugh, read the last sentence.

No!  You don't say!

This DHS response is rather lame...But we can always track 2010's terrorist events with our very own Counterterrorism daily planner.

In the end, our radicals will continue to whine about counterterrorism policies and efforts, regardless of who is president and how many speeches they make...

Like this: http://umarlee.com/2010/01/04/thoughts-on-the-underwear-bomber-and-the-aftermath/

Or this low-key but surprisingly unseemly post about assassinating President Obama
http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2010/01/obama-disappoints-again.html

"Eight years into the war in Afghanistan," Flynn writes, "the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall

In a related, if under-reported, story:  the December publication of a stinging report on the state of our intel capabilities in Afghanistan by Major General Flynn, et al, has caused a bit of a fuss in the blogoshere.

Mike -- aka my boss at Current Intelligence -- makes a good point about the dangers of COINophilia.

Defense strategy is not my game, but can I make a suggestion?  The floundering Afghan strategy may also be a symptom of another failure.  If I'm not mistaken, preparing for two simultaneous wars was a strategic imperative of 90s-era Pentagon policy.  Well, 2001-present has seen just such a situation, but we've been woefully unable to balance the two.  What happened to the two-war strategy?

American Salafist-Jihadism Emerges

Despite numerous arrests, convictions, reports of recruitment activities, and general vile behavior, the United States' small but very vocal Salafist-Jihadist (SJ) community saw its first inspired terrorist attack on US soil last week at Fort Hood.  Numerous British and US reports paint a picture of a man who was active in this small, mostly virtual community.  As Jarret (and Jihadica and Jawa Report) report, Hasan's violence has been met with elation in the US SJ community and on English language jihadi forums:

Bottom line up front: On the English-language, pro AQ websites, Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack at Ft Hood is being hailed as a victory for Islam and al-Qaida. The participants involved in the discussion see this as the opening shot in what they hope to be a long and bloody war in the United States.

These reports also highlight the key role of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American scholar of Islamic law who was once touted in the local press as a young, moderate leader of Northern Virginia's burgeoning suburban Muslim community.  This while the FBI was investigating his connections to several of the 9-11 hijackers. Interestingly, anyone who has been monitoring the US-based SJ community was well aware of the centrality of Awlaki's role in it.  After he fled the United States, he landed in Yemen and has been running an "American"-language blog (written in prefect idiomatic American English) since 2007-2008 (I'm working from memory here).  His posts, audio and video commentaries, and fatawa, were prominently displayed throughout the US-based SJ community.  That he has only now come to the awareness of many in the military and intelligence communities, is more evidence of the appalling mediocrity and endemic bureaucratic indifference that defines the policy and analysis industries here in Washington, DC.

Since it emerged in earnest back in 2005-6 with a collection of blogs and websites, America's SJ virtual community has expanded its presence to include active members of Scribd, Archive.org, and Youtube.  However, it appears to be more talk than action.  Reports following the arrest of Tarek Mehanna and 2 associates, make this small circle of terrorist wannabes appear to rather hapless.  Most of the global SJ action remains in the Middle East and South Asia.  Arabic and Urdu are still the primary languages of SJ ideology.  The US network's only real religious authority has been the commentary and fatawa of al-Awlaki.

The Fort Hood attack has changed all this, however.  It's clear that Hasan was very active in the US SJ community.  He communicated with al-Awlaki, and there are now reports that he was talking to others as well.  His 2007 power point presentation on Islam is the crystallization of the SJ ideology, expressed in American English, intended for an American audience.

There is good news here, if you can call it that.  Hasan's attack may have happened too soon in the SJ community's development.  The community still lacks authoritative heft it needs to be taken seriously inside the global movement (like a "Blind Sheikh").  By "coming of age" too soon, it may doom itself to jihadi caricature.   That may change in the next 5-10 years as recently convicted Salafist-Jihadis are released from prison, having had many years to study and delve deeper into the justifications for violence.  It's hard to predict what if any will be the impact of this cadre of radical American Muslims with prison cred, but I can practically guarantee that it will shock our policy and intelligence communities.

The Known Unknown

This was just posted to -- where else? ---

http://www.archive.org/details/Jihad-in-Turkistan-Middle

It's an old video, but the online jihadi who posted it to share amongst his forum friends probably did the unintended service of reminding us of the continuing jihad in Western China.  Uighurs represent a sizable portion of the foreign jihadis picked up or killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan (there were numerous ones profiled in the jihadi hagiography, Martyrs in a Time of Alienation)

Regardless of how "well" things are going for the jihad in Western China, I think it's safe to say that we have no idea how it's going.  The Communist Chinese government is never going to honestly report on it, and there are few, if any, independent journalists working the region.  Practically all the open source analysis I've seen on jihad activity in the region relies on official Chinese government news sources.  Notice how there haven't been any reports of arrests or thwarted plots since the Olympics? Any analyst-- government or otherwise -- who relies on these "news" reports must be met with a kind nod of the head and a whole lot of skepticism.

There are a few "slice of life" blogs about Western China, and they give you a general idea about the state of life in the region, but these are not bloggers looking for or reporting on conflict.  There are none.

http://www.thenewdominion.net/

http://china.notspecial.org/

Very Much In the Box

Update (11/25/08):   Apparently, I'm not the only blogger viewing the new NIC 2025 report with a healthy dose of skepticism.  Dave Schuler at Outside the Beltway: "Unfortunately, I think James has been altogether too kind in his assessment of the report. Whatever the cost of preparing it might have been, it wasn’t worth it."  And Shlok Vaidya: "Frankly, it’s not worth the hard drive space."

========================

I notice that Thomas Barnett is about as excited with the new NIC as I am.  He says it all.

It's just so unimaginative and reflects the NIC talking to a lot of stale academics who trot out their analogies to 19th-century colonialism and balance-of-power politics while completely discounting the profound economic--and especially financial--interdependence (the latter currently on display big time).

The report itself reads like the practice scenarios I studied for my book (now out of print, alas!).  Let's see, I read The Art of the Long View in 1997.  That makes some of these fresh ideas, oh, about ten years old. 

I love this one:

The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

Now that is risk taking!  The report's discussion of the role of religion could be construed as offensive, if it wasn't so clueless:

If religious structures offer vehicles to resist globalization, they also help people cope with those same forces, enhancing social stability and economic development. Without religious safety nets, the degree of chaos and fragmentation in developing nations would be far worse. As predominantly rural societies have become more urban over the last 30 or 40 years, millions of migrants have been attracted to larger urban complexes without the resources or infrastructures to provide adequate healthcare, welfare, and education. The alternative social system provided by religious organizations has been a potent factor in winning mass support for religion.

Ah yes, the opiate of the masses.  How very innovative.

I'd also like to point out that the document is very slow to load from the ODNI server.  This is, I suspect, a traffic management issue that should have been anticipated. 

Muddled, Absurd and

Tedious.

That's Juan Cole's Salon article from yesterday (via Jawa).

Around the World

In Iraq:  Al Qaeda is moving on (via GulfNews)

Baghdad: Some groups of Al Qaida terror network in Iraq have started leaving the country towards other hot spots in Africa like Sudan and Somalia, security sources tell Gulf News. A key reason behind the change in strategy by the so-called Al Qaida Organisation in Mesopotamia is the intensity of the latest military strikes launched by Iraqi and US forces against the network, which has been the major challenge to restoring the stability of Iraq, the sources said....A source at Iraqi Ministry of National Security said that documents and letters found in hideouts of "some elements of Al Qaida" during search operations in Sunni suburbs in Baghdad, which were previously under the control of Al Qaida, "prove these elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan".  The information, which could not be confirmed by independent sources, could represent a victory for the Iraqi government, headed by Nouri Al Maliki..

In Italy (via AKI)

Milan, 7 July (AKI) - The President of the northern Italian city of Milan, Filippo Penati, has triggered widespread debate with a controversial proposal to fine Muslims who pray on the streets outside the city's mosque.  According to authorities, the number of people praying on the sidewalk creates traffic and obstacles for pedestrians in the area surrounding the Viale Jenner mosque, a converted garage.

and this (via AKI)

Rome, 7 July (AKI) - Abdellatif Ibrahim Fatayer, one of the men convicted of hijacking the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, was freed in Rome on Monday. Fatayer, who was born in the Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, is the youngest of the hijackers. According to the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, Fatayer was expected to be deported from Italy after serving a 21-year sentence plus three years under police surveillance. But Lebanon refused to accept him after he was freed from jail.

In Pakistan (via AKI/DAWN)

Khar, 7 July (AKI/DAWN) - Pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan have established Sharia or Islamic courts in the Bajaur tribal region which borders Afghanistan.  A large number of people are believed to be waiting to use the courts established by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in order to resolve disputes instead of waiting for action by the tribal administration. The courts have been functioning for a couple of weeks in the Sewai area, about 20 kilometres northwest of Khar, the regional headquarters of Bajaur tribal region.

In Washington, DC (via Danger Room)

Ha hahahahahhaha ha ha  ha  ha aaaaah

UPDATE (07/12/08): Okay, I knew this, but it's still funny.

Around the Web

Ubi has a request:  Case Sensitive Searching

Does anybody know how to conduct case-sensitive web searches?

Good question, man.  Commercial sources like Dialog permit this kind of searching, but web engines?  Perhaps one of my readers knows...

Cyber Warfare as Low Intensity Conflict

  A chart developed by CERIAS, via Selil Blog

Oh, brother!

Oh, BROTHER!

The God Thing

IntelFusion links to a current article at ISN Security Watch by Adrian Woolridge, "Rational actors: secular fallacies," that sums up one of the dramatic weaknesses in our foreign policy: our "inability to take faith seriously":

The Boykin affair offers an especially vivid example of the confusion that reigns where religion and foreign policy intersect, which they do quite routinely these days. Opinion elites have long been accustomed to ignoring religious belief altogether. This blinded them to one of the most important developments of the past 40 years, what Gilles Kepel has called "le revanche de dieu."

So, lately - and particularly in the aftermath of 11 September - these same elites have been overcompensating for their past error, at once exaggerating and caricaturing the role of religion in world affairs. The twin errors are both fruits of the same poisoned tree: the foreign policy establishment's refusal, or simple inability, to take faith seriously.

I'll be the one to add the West's intelligence communities to his list.

Woolridge honestly notes that the common mindset of Western foreign policy and diplomatic elites that religion is a personal affair is "now hopelessly antiquated."

Religion is today on display everywhere - in the overflowing megachurches of American suburbs, in the revival of beards and veils in Islamic communities, in the daily headlines of every newspaper...And, yet, despite all this, and long after it became clear that the turbulent priests had returned to the public square, Washington's diplomats and think-tankers remained locked in a Westphalian box - obsessed with the balance of power or the pursuit of economic interests or the clash of secular creeds.

This can also be said about the mindset of the Western intelligence communities, where the antiquated, 20th century mindset still informs basic approaches to threat analysis.  In this environment religion is dismissed as irrational, and the hard sciences are deemed objective.  There's also an unwarranted fear of mixing God with government, and a fear of appearing to be intolerant, or of violating the ever-moving goal-posts of what constitutes proper multicultural speech.

Woolridge also notes that the void of religion within the foreign policy elite (my phrase) can cause "over-correction." Pretty soon, religion is analyzed into "caricature."  In the intelligence community, this penchant for caricature, leads policymakers and the analysts who serve them, to dismiss what the enemy actually says.  They inaccurately describe it as propaganda, and ignore it in calculations.  They breeze past the camel in the room, on their way to a conclusion that doesn't make them stammer with discomfort.   

The BIG problem here is that when godless bureaucrats attempt to tackle God the results are generally ineffective, sometimes awful.   They'll hire anthropologists and psychologists to discuss the scientific basis of religion.  This approach is apparently more rational than, say, hiring theologians, who think and talk about God for a living.  A few may have an aha! moment and invite the pastor of their Unitarian church to talk about "faith traditions," as if Wicca and Salafist-Jihadist current share something in common.  Even worse, they'll hire the "moderate" radical Islamist front groups -- "modicals," as I call them -- to inform classrooms of analysts about the Islam, giving access to key individuals in the intelligence community to members of groups that are fundamentally hostile to American civilization.

None of this supports analysis.  Quite the opposite, it just injects confusion into volatile environment that is over sensitive to analytical conclusions.  The outcome is not a better understanding of the enemy, but rather a further weakening of credibility and confidence. 

Bogus or Clueless?

Things WMD-related always pique my interest since it was an area of study way back when.  And so I was curious when some eager online jihadi posted "Nuclear Jihad -- The Ultimate Terror" at the Clearinghouse on Monday night.   Several things were clear from the original Monday posting, and after viewing the video:

1. This wasn't Al Qaida
2. These weren't even well-trained amateurs
3. They had no technical understanding of nuclear weaponry
4. There wasn't any threat related to it

And so within an hour of seeing the post, downloading and viewing the video, I forgot about it.  I was surprised to see that the video made Drudge the following night.  First, I assumed the video being announced was something new, because Al Qaida has an MO with its media products, and there was nothing in the information streams that resembled their MO.  Second, the video was such a piece of crap that no one could possibly interpret it as a threat.  Right?

Shocka.

It's still unclear exactly what went wrong on the analysis side of the house, but I suspect that at least part of the reason has to do with the rather unsophisticated opinion most policymakers have of terrorist information found in open source.  The expectation is that open source data behaves just like classified data, only it's worthless because everyone can see it.  Thus when a (real) al Qaida video or audio tape is pulled off  "the Internet" -- that strange and wondrous thing that delivers e-mails to the Blackberry -- it's only understood in very abstract way. 

Without an appreciation of open source characteristics such as context and content, an analyst is merely going to interpret the information given, as is, and will probably get it wrong.  The fact is open source is a world in and of itself.  It has its own characteristics and applications outside of the classified world of managed and controlled snippets of raw intel and formal analysis.  When the two world's collide you get whatever it was that happen over the past two days.   

This probably wasn't a "prank," just a completely preventable case of the analytical meltdown in action.

Around the Web

A brief survey of some of the more interesting items that showed up on my feed reader tonight.

From the adminisphere. UPI reports on the FBI's "adminisphere" doing what it does best -- chasing good people out.  In this case it's an order that requires all ambitious special agents to work at FBI's DC headquarters for two years pushing paper before moving into higher positions of authority.  This rule is about as stupid as the one in place when I was there that prohibited analysts from transferring out of the counterterrorism division.  Looks like the results are the same:

"The fact that everything has to be decided at headquarters has caused a major problem," one agent told the Times. "I can tell you, many experienced supervisors are bailing out, taking their retirements or leaving early rather than uprooting their lives to move to Washington where very little actual investigative work is being done."

Finally. Ubiwar reports that the Pentagon has got around to defining/redefining cyberspace.  Woo hoo!

I told you so.  They are so angry at this whole church-on-the-Arabian-Peninsula thing.

Stieglitz.  Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs was within "reporting distance" of an electricity generation plant.

Sherpa. AKI reports that the US thinks Bin Laden is in Pakistan's northern mountains:

The report also said US secret services [whatever that is -- MSJ] were intending to drive him out in a major military operation encompassing the northern Pakistani tribal areas.

Something may have happened in southern Somalia, according to Gulf News.

Thanks, Bill.  Jihadica has linked to a new Lawrence Wright article on the "fissure" between Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sayyid Imam, aka Dr. Fadl.  Now I know what I will be reading tonight.

Nothing's Changed

Reuters reports on a Congressional hearing yesterday that included one current and one former FBI special agent.  I'd like to dismiss this as so much anti-Administration posturing, but the testimony portrays reality that I experienced in my brief time there in 2003 :

The FBI said that in March, in an internal e-mail cited by Youssef, it was seeking permanent supervisors in its International Terrorism Operations Section 1 (ITOS 1), which tracks al Qaeda.

The e-mail said: "This is due to the fact that ITOS 1 is currently at 62 percent of its funded staffing level. It is critical to the (counterterrorism) mission that these positions be filled as soon as possible."

Last year the bureau assigned 12 staffers with no counterterrorism experience to work as international terrorism supervisors, Youssef said.

Many supervisors in such positions became discouraged, aware they were in over their heads, and warned other agents against taking similar posts, he said.

The cynic in me says:  "Wow, they got it up to 62% staffing!"  But the (former) manager in me knows that 62% of current staffing levels reflects previous years of staffing problems.  It must include high turnover rates among analysts, a phenomenon I saw and personally experienced in the time I was there.  As a matter of fact one of the unit managers joked with me about turnover, saying that the FBI was the farm team for the IC's analysts.  That was 2003.  Apparently, nothing's changed.

 

At the Speed of Government

Over at Counterterrorism Blog Jeffrey Imm is lamenting the gaping nothing that is our government's counterideology strategy:

The Washington Times reported that: "FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed during the hearing that the FBI has no counterideology response other than its 'outreach' to Muslim-American communities so they 'understand the FBI' and address 'the radicalization issue'. " Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas. The department's incident management team, he said, is focused on civil rights or civil liberties -- not fighting terrorists' ideology." "Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, said the intelligence community does not conduct any battle of ideas against terrorists in the United States unless there is a foreign connection."

Imm concludes with a question:

With an unresolved strategy towards an enemy that the U.S. political leadership refuses to define as other than "extremists", it is little surprise that "strategic operational planning" would leave something to be desired. But as some suggest Bin Laden's messages are sleep-worthy, key parts of the U.S. government are clearly asleep at the wheel in fighting Bin Laden's message and ideology.

What will it take to wake them up?

Imm's post reminds me of something that Mark Steyn wrote some time in 2002-03.  After reading the news that the US immigration service had finally granted Mohammed Atta his student visa, Steyn wrote (paraphrased here): you can drive a plan into the bureaucratic mindset and it just bounces right off.

The answer to Imm's question: nothing.  Right now, the political appointees are looking for new jobs.  The government employees are waiting for the new boss.  Expect a new round of political appointees to repeat the same non-answers in, say, 18 months.

Ibrahim on ASMEA

Ray Ibrahim attended the recent ASMEA conference, and has posted a few positive comments and insights about the event at the MESH (Middle East Strategy at Harvard) blog.

Making Nice With All the Wrong People

Writing at National Review, Andrew McCarthy weighs in on the reasons and the consequences of the US government's recent decision to avoid terms like "Islam" or "jihad" while combating Islamic terrorists fighting a jihad.

As policy, DHS gives us rose-tinted category error. It confounds Islam with Muslims and non-violence with moderation. There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world and the majority of them would not come close to committing a terrorist act. But their rejection of jihadist methods is not an en masse rejection of jihadist goals. Similarly, the belief that America should become a sharia state, which is not all that uncommon among even American Muslims, is not a moderate one, even if a Muslim who holds it is not willing to blow up buildings to make it so. And even if most Muslims resolve the tension between their faith and modernity by choosing to take scriptures non-literally, or by marginalizing their violent directives as relics of a bygone time and place, that makes those Muslims peaceful people; it does not make Islam a peaceful religion. Where combating Muslim terror is concerned, Islam is a hurdle you need to get over, not a means by which you get over the hurdle.

In short, under the guise of prescribing how our government officials should speak “strategically” so as not to offend potential allies in the Muslim world, the new guidance (and, importantly, the government ethos that produced it) is transparently intended to sell Americans on the Islam of DHS’s dreams, not the Islam we actually have to deal with.

Or, as Jospeh Myers wrote, our "strategic collapse."

Answering Academia

For decades it appeared that radical, leftist academia had triumphed utterly in practically every discipline of the humanities and social sciences.  But nothing lasts forever.  I see here and there little signs of life in the resistance to its influence whether it is the recent establishment of ASMEA (see Bernard Lewis' address to the first annual conference) or the ongoing response to weak, ineffectual military history highlighted at the Chicago Boyz blog:

Looked at from the perspective of what the academics are doing, it sure looks bleak. But that is only part of the picture. I believe it is an increasingly irrelevant part of the picture. In fact, I don’t know how much good it would do to have the current population of academia teaching this history.

Under the Bus

I've linked to the invaluable work of Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo in the past.  When it comes to Al Qaeda's media operations and strategy, they are two of the best analysts out there. 

Abu Aardvark reports that their work was tossed under the bus for that all-purpose government contracting excuse, "budgetary shortfalls."

That's right:  the US government is cutting loose one of its best analysts of al-Qaeda's use of the internet in order to save money which doesn't even amount to a rounding error in the Pentagons budget. Whether it's because of the fall of the dollar or because of the costs of Iraq, or more narrowly because of the Broadcasting Board of Governors need to pay the bills of the al-Hurra TV white elephant, this speaks volumes about both our real resource constraints and our real priorities.

It's always hard to say why a good project ends.  There's often a confluence of reasons.  A few that I can pull off the top of my head: 

• Government is slowly moving into hibernation, waiting for the new administration. Key political positions are emptying and career bureaucrats are "acting" in their stead.  The bare minimum of work is being done.
• Summer is coming (when nothing gets done in DC anyway), and
  
• There's also the inevitable end of the fiscal year budget (with no real FY 09 budget in sight)

And of course, there's always cases of leadership clashes and personality issues, but more often than not it's bureaucratic lethargy.

I'm all too familiar with it.

Weeds

I think a drink is in order.  I raise a virtual flute of prosecco to the Muslim Brotherhood on the 80th anniversary of their founding.  Happy Anniversary, er, enemy.    

"As far as I remember," Hassan al-Banna writes in his memoirs, "it was the month of Ziqadah, 1347 and March 1928 when six friends... came to see me."   Standing around a school house in the Egyptian city of Ismailiya, the six friends implore him to establish a group. "It is for you to guide us," he recalls them saying. He accepts their sincere offer and as he writes:

Consequently, the oath of allegiance was taken by all of us.  We determined on solemn oath that we shall live as brethren; work for the glory of Islam and launch Jihad for it.

He goes on to lay out the foundational idea of the group,

"The basis of our unity and organization should be our ideology and faith.  Our moral thinking and particular way of its implementation.  We are united to serve the cause of Islam..." 

They decided on a name: Al Ikhwanul Muslemoon. 

"Thus with the co-operation of these six gentlemen, the first organization in the name of al Ikhwanul Muslemoon came into existence.  Its emergence was sudden and simple and its aims and object were those defined above.

Eighty years later the grand children of the early Ikhwan are active across the globe.  Considering the history of the group -- crackdowns, imprisonments, persecutions, exiles, and executions throughout the decades -- you have to give credit where it is due: they are resilient.  Why?  What makes the Ikhwan so formidable?  Taking the group's history into account it may be possible to piece together a Western answer. 

Part of the answer lies in its history of confrontation with tyrannical Arab regimes. Dictatorships are by their nature weak governments, with weak political and social institutions revolving around the personality and ego of a single man who will suffer no rivals.  Throughout its history the Ikhwan has succeeded in confronting these regimes by slowly, strategically infiltrating the weak political institutions around them. In so doing they take root, like weeds in a sidewalk, in the weakest sections, and grow out through influence.  This is why when the dictator comes around to "rooting out" the group, their efforts are so ugly, so brutal, and so all-encompassing.

When some Ikhwan members fled West, they encountered a different kind of tyranny in their eyes.  The Christian character of the West is antithetical to Islam and its practice.  Western secular governments may be indifferent to Ikhwan members as such, but the day-to-day lives of people are still informed by Christian sensibilities, and this is an assault to the fundamental practice of Ikhwan's Sunni brand of Islam.   After all, if Christ is risen from the dead, then Islam is not possible. 

Still, western secular governments generally have practiced benign indifference to Ikhwan activities.  So what's a group born of confrontation to do when there's nothing to confront?  They still need to survive and thrive, and so they've mastered another tactic, fitnah.  The general definition is anarchy or strife,  but it's also used to describe disagreement, schism, chaos, and civil war. 

If their goal is survival and growth then there is no better way to do it then to identify the weakest parts of Western society and take root.  For this, they have identified the most secular (and thus in their eyes the weakest) social institutions they can find --  academia, government, media, and even secularized forms of Christianity and Judaism -- and have stretched out their roots. And weak they are, after decades of post-modernism, multiculturalism, and political correctness.  Our political and social institutions have softened their once-powerful authoritative and intellectual foundations.

By establishing credentials  and building relationships within perceived weakening systems of power, they can cause fitnah among their enemy when they need to. This is in part what we see when the occasional commentator or analyst has the temerity to speak up about the real motivating factors animating our enemy.  The institutional leadership chastises, berates, even casts out, those who say something.

However from their perspective, Ikhwan members don't distinguish between leaders and followers both are the same enemy.  Fitnah allows them to have the enemy do the fighting for them. 

This may help explain why they have been so successful at drawing the analytical framework on which our government confronts the enemy.  Just as their doctrine and practice are becoming apparent to us, the Ihkwan has moved to have the institutions themselves stifle any further inquiry.  And they have been astonishingly successful in their efforts. In the face of mountains of facts and figures, dot-connecting that even a child could do, we see the leadership of political and social institutions simply ignore it all in an effort that is perplexing as it is depressing.  Good guys: 0, Ikhwan: 5.

The problem of course is that they can only keep this up for so long.  Eventually, the truth outs itself.  This has become apparent in the Roman Catholic Church where the perceived secularizing weakness of the "spirit of Vatican II" was replaced with Pope Benedict's speech at Regensberg.  The enemy's response?  First, violence.  That was unsuccessful.  Now they are going to participate in a dialog on the Church's terms in the hopes, I guess, of finding some other crack in which to take root.  Let's call this Trinitarian God: 1, Ikhwan: 0.

For those of us who get it to one degree or another, I can honestly say that we're losing. Badly.  And so I think a drink is in order.  To the enemy!  May you not survive another year longer!

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Note: I made a few edits on 5/7

The Once and Future Analyst

RAND Corp recently released an excellent report on the current state of our intelligence community.    Here's one line that stood out for me:

As Rob Johnston, a rare anthropologist who turned his attentions to the Intelligence Community, thanks to the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, has found, most training is on-the job training.

Update:

Gabriel Schoenfeld reminds readers of the every-day reality of being a government intel analyst and managing them:

The lesson here is that, try as one might to persuade people working in large organizations to cooperate for the common good, nitty-gritty career incentives will always and forever trump everything else.

Resistance to Change

Congressional Quarterly has a report on a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday on the FBI progress, or lack thereof, in transforming its capabilities to fight terrorism.  It includes this list of "problems stemming from the FBI’s resistance to change," compiled by committee staff:

• Field intelligence groups lack clear guidance on their mission, are poorly staffed, are generally lead by special agents and are often surged to other FBI priorities.

• The FBI faces difficulties training, managing and retaining intelligence analysts.

• Only two of 24 senior intelligence officer positions have been filled over a three year period.

• The FBI still has no ability to electronically store and share images and audio files associated with their intelligence investigations.

• Only 60 percent of the counterterrorism supervisory special agent positions have been staffed, and more than 23 percent of the supervisory special agent positions in charge of al Qaeda-related cases remain vacant.

• The FBI’s top counterterrorism position has been held by seven different FBI special agents in the last five years.

Dude, Where’s My Book Review?

You can always tell a leftist is writing counterterrorism analysis, because more often than not they will communicate their oh-so-nuanced approach to Al Qaeda by dismissing what AQ has to say, and moving on to more important things, like, say, the reasons why we went into Iraq (none of which have anything to do with the actual reasons why we went into Iraq).  Throw in a few words on how the US is ultimately to blame for all this mess, and you have yourself something worthy of, say, a Washington Post book review. 

CFR Senior Fellow Steven Simon leaves Iraq out of his "review" of Ray Ibrahim’s new book The Al Qaeda Reader.  For that, I’m grateful. Instead, he spends most of the review pushing individuals and ideas more to his ideological liking.  Don’t get me wrong, he does appear to like the book.  He describes what Mr. Ibrahim has “cobbled together” as “useful,” and “instructive,” but the reader has got to work to get an overall positive impression.

Three paragraphs into it, Mr. Simon has already condescended to the author and dismissed UBL’s “utterances” and Al-Zawahiri’s “scribblings” as inspired by the ever-so ho-hum “anti-American and anti-Semitic motifs that have circulated in Europe and the Middle East for over a century...” 

I could have done without his sneering dismissal of Mr. Ibrahim’s analysis.  Apparently, Mr. Ibrahim’s weakness is that he has “found a place in the neocon blogosphere.”  For such an offense, however, Mr. Simon is willing to forgive him, because, you see, Mr. Ibrahim is a victim. “As the son of an immigrant family from Egypt and a Coptic Christian,” he writes, “he might be forgiven for taking this position.  Fundamentalists of al-Zawahiri’s ilk have tried to make a misery of Coptic life in Egypt.”  Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Ibrahim’s analysis all has to do with sour grapes, events beyond his meager “archivists” mind. 

Mr. Simon and his “ilk” apparently only see the current global conflict with radical Islam in geopolitical terms.  This fits in with their training.  It also continues to be an effective analytical approach for analyzing practically any other trends, event, person or policy other than radical Islam.  When it comes to radical Islam, all geopolitical analysis falls short, and individuals who would otherwise give sound insights on any other topic are actually left sputtering and posing.  Because, you see, the enemy has no interest in dealing with us in anything but their own terms, and those terms are spelled out in their astonishingly broad body of religious and ideological texts, the most important of which predate Al Qaeda by decades. 

It’s hard to explain to someone who is not in the “industry” so-to-speak, but this posing is common among the Middle East studies-graduates being fast-tracked into key government analysts positions.  They tend to be so ill-prepared to take on the radical Islamist ideology that they can only pretend to know anything about it by dismissing it, feigning some deep, nuanced understanding of the enemy with a sniff of condescension.  Many of them can parrot Edward Said without so much as an intake of breath, but can’t seem to wrap their minds around one of Al Qaeda’s three fatawa. 

Now, Steven Simon has written two books on Al Qaeda. I'll give him credit for knowing far more than your average GS-9 analyst, but if all he's going to do is sniff at the enemy and blame the US , he might as well get a hobby. He writes:

The usefulness of anthologies such as this one is generally thought to lie in the importance of better knowing the enemy. But winning a war of ideas also requires understanding how others see us -- and why it resonates with so many whose hearts and minds we are battling for. I'm reminded of a Hellenistic tombstone from Egypt that depicts a reclining skeleton and the phrase gnothe seauton: "know thyself." That's part of the challenge bin Laden poses to us.

No, Mr. Simon.  The only challenge UBL poses to us is how to kill him. 

Radical Islam existed for decades before bin Laden and will outlive him for many more decades.  The challenge is understanding radical Islam, and for this we turn to men like Ray Ibrahim.  At least he's willing to take the enemy at their word.

I remember sitting at some think tank event recently where a group of analysts from one think tank were arguing with a group of analysts from another think tank about the quality of their sources: “Our sources are better than yours.”  Reply:  “No, ours are better than yours.”   Of course, with a few exceptions, like RAND, and Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project, most think tank analysis of Al Qaeda is appallingly off, because they're all stuck in the Cold War era mindset of analyzing for national interests.  Al Qaeda isn't a nation, as a matter of fact, it tries its darnedest to eradicate national identity from its followers.  The major reason why groups like RAND and Investigative Project tend to get it right lies in their reliance on primary source material.  They take the enemy at their word.

Minor edits - 10-08-07

Evil Lemons

I've noticed a strong spike in hits from Daniel Pipes' blog.  No doubt this has to do with Columbia University's (and the National Press Club's) decision to embrace the Iranian dictator. 

The leftists who run universities no doubt see this in part as a snub on President Bush.  In response, I believe that the President should make a public statement regarding Columbia's decision, for two reasons:

1. It would bring this appalling event into the national political dialog and it will be an opportunity to challenge political leftists, presidential candidates to clarify their policies on Iran (something they are incapable of doing); and
2. It would be an opportunity to make a statement supporting the persecuted reporters and students of Iran,  and turning this event into an opportunity to highlight Ahmadinejad's own suppression of academic activity and free speech

If the idiot leftists at Columbia want this to be political, then perhaps our Republican leaders should make it political.

Update:  If our leftist establishment wants to hug high profile thugs, I think they should be permitted to do so.  However, we should make sure everyone knows exactly what they're doing and what the consequences are every time they do it between now and election day '08.

About Right

AP recently reported on public comments made by National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell which included this little piece of info that highlights the sheer immensity of the bureaucratic hurdles FBI agents and analysts have to go through in order to put someone under surveillance:

—McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. "We're going backwards," he said. "We couldn't keep up."

—Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.

BTW: If I recall, the government has two types of surveillance authorities, one is evidence collection, that’s the Title III wiretap, and then there is intelligence gathering, that’s FISA surveillance.  (Until recently you couldn't use FISA-collected info in court proceedings.)  Neither of these things is eavesdropping, only mainstream media outlets and the clueless liberals call it eavesdropping.

Eavesdropping is what you did to your big brother or sister when they were talking on the phone and you wanted to annoy them.  Example:

“Mom!  Marisa keeps on picking up the kitchen phone!” 

This was particularly effective in the bad old days when a house had two phones and the only way you could get any privacy was to have a receiver with a really long cord so you could hide in the closest closet. 

On a related note

This recent Newsweek article is a frustrating read, and reminds me that it wasn’t just the cube dwelling paper pushers in DC who struggled against a tide of worthless bureaucratic process and, as Hotair notes, “fatal risk aversion:”

Rice, the A-Team sergeant stuck in his safe house near Kandahar, recalls that his team’s frustration peaked when a memo came down from the brass at Baghram, ordering men not to initiate fire fights and even not to use words like “death” and “destruction” in their CONOPS. Among Rice’s men, it became known as the “limp dick memo.”

Note to Charles (at LGF)

Please don't give them any more ideas.

NYT Hysterics & the Real News

UPDATE (10:05 PM):  NY Times posted the article at 10 PM.  It's here.  As I say below.  There's nothing new here.

As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization’s hierarchy as intact and strengthening.

“The chain of command has been re-established,” said one American government official, who said that the Qaeda “leadership command and control is robust.”

American officials and analysts said a variety of factors in Pakistan had come together to allow “core Al Qaeda” — a reference to Mr. bin Laden and his immediate circle — to regain some of their strength. The emergence of a relative haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding area has helped senior operatives communicate more effectively with the outside world via courier and the Internet.

This tells us more about the quality of intel analysis than about our counterterrorism policy. Policy needs to be guided by the light of good intel, analyzed for maximum benefit.  If the analytical product sucks, then we're stumbling around in the dark.

------------------------------------------------

Drudge Report has just posted the really big red headline (no siren, though) breaking a NY Times report that supposedly says that Al Qaeda leadership has reconstituted itself along the Pakistani/Afghan border.  This is news?  Apparently to the mainstream media this is news.  Whatever.

I've never bought the idea that Al Qaeda was the loose network of networks.  It was too sexy and too impractical a concept.  It sounded like something thought up by a bunch of government contractors.  Successful attacks need ideas, money, and most of all, good leadership.  You don't get that from a bunch of kids downloading jihadi stuff off the internet.

The UK and Australia have both broken several huge terrorist plots in the past three years that all include some combination of senior Al Qaeda leadership guidance, Al Qaeda-linnked money sources, or extensive training (in Pakistan) for its operatives. 

• Ministry of Sound cell (UK - 2004)
• Sydney Cell (Australia - 2004)
• Issa al-Hindi Cell (UK/US - 2004)
• London 7/7 Cell (UK - 2005)
• Sydney/Melbourne Cell (Australia - 2005)
• Airliners Cell (UK - 2006)

None of these were work of a weakened Al Qaeda.

The real news on DRUDGE tonight wasn't the fact that Al Qaeda is alive and well, it's the fact that a significant portion of one of the world's largest Protestant denominations is considering realigning itself with the Roman Catholic church.  In other words: Drudge is reporting on a possible miracle. 

Once again the Triune God enters from stage above.