Lately Al Qaeda seems to be attacking extremely soft targets, and the attacks themselves are not very sophisticated. The last two attacks in Saudi Arabia have killed more fellow Arabs(and Muslims) than Americans. Is Al Qaeda getting desperate? And will these tactics ultimately undermine support and recruitment in the Middle East?






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If you were in charge of an Al-Quaida operation, would you go after obvious American targets? First off, Al-Quaida is not a central organization, never has been, that is why it is nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to really wipe them out. Even OBL was not in central planning in every act, so you can't very well expect every attack to be military spot on? It is the act of suprise and terror that makes them a force to be recognized, not thier military efficacy or efficiency!

Is Al Qaeda getting desperate?

No, I don't think so.

I don't think the attacks in Saudi Arabia show this, because the 'liberation' of Saudi Arabia has always been assumed to be al qaeda's primary objective. In order to accomplish that goal, the terrorists would have to install a sense of fear and anarchy in the Saudi nation to provocate a popular uprising against the ruling royal family.

If anything, these attacks show a depressing dedication to that goal.

I have to wonder about that.....

There is no question that Saudi Arabia is the prime recruiting ground for Al Qaeda and one has to wonder about attacks within that country and the effects it might have. But, what really puzzles me and makes me think that Al Qaeda might be getting desperate are the attacks in Mecca. I don't know a whole lot about the religion of Islam, but I do know that Mecca is the holiest of holy places for Muslims. In my mind, I can not imagine how Muslims would support terrorist attacks there. First of all, the only people that are going to be hurt in an attack there are other Muslims, Mecca is off-limits to non-Muslims, so an attack there would seem to be an attack against Islam itself. Maybe I'm missing something, but it sure seems to me that such things would turn even the most fanatic Muslim against Al Qaeda. It really doesn't make sense, but then again, when has Al Qaeda ever made sense.

The most recent attacks will only serve to galvanize support for the WOT. Even the harshest critics of the US have to see that these thugs will stop at nothing in their quest to eliminate all who disagree with them from the face of the earth. It has taken some longer than others to understand the nature of this conflict, but actions such as these help make things clearer.

The only ones left to be convinced are those who don't want to accept the reality.The fight against terrorism is defined by the fight against Islamism. The rest of the world will eventually win that fight, but not before much blood is shed. God will not have it any other way.

I think Al-Queda is getting desperate because they are now targeting fellow muslims, which could ultimately effect their recruiting efforts in the Middle East.

CruisingRam:



The obvious American targets in Saudi Arabia were abandoned (the embassies), so there would have been no satisfaction in destroying them because there would be no casualties. Al-Queda loves major casualties. Also, the residential compound that housed Americans was already destroyed from the May bombing, so there would be no sense in attacking it. Also, the US's airlines are more secured (though some would debate that) so there would be a larger chance of getting caught then pre-9/11 security

Are you seriously suggesting that America has the right to wage war against a religion? Are we attempting to extinguish Islam?

Why stop there? why not the Jews, Hindus and Buddhists?

It's hard to say really whether or not they're getting desperate or if the targets are just more convenient. Like the US administration has said, we'd rather fight the war on terrorism over there then on our own soil. I think radicals of any kind will eventually self destruct. Look at the Nazi's for example and the KKK. I think AlQueda is so loosely organized that the individual cells and groups pretty much go it alone on these small operations, just to cause havoc with no real set agenda except to aggitate things. The bigger targets (like 9/11) are carried out on a larger scale with bigger backers though. I don't think the two are related as far as being desperate, it's just all apart of "their game", in a manor of speaking.

a purely SoCali personal assessment: These fundamaniacs are anything BUT "freedom fighters." Vile, ignorant animals are more appropriate terms.

And will these tactics ultimately undermine support and recruitment in the Middle East?

This latest in sickening attacks on the most innocent of humanity, children and their babysitters (majority of the killed), is FINALLY opening the eyes of moderate (if there are any) Muslims to the true brutality and willingness to kill their own, of AlQaeda.

I hope that if there exists ANY tiny sense of humanity within the franchises of Islam and the culture (seems to be non-existent from an outsider looking in on that region), that ONE person SPEAK up aggressively against OBL and his coalition of mongrels to say enough is enough.

As far as support and recruitment.
In the far reaches of the frontiers of Arab ruled countries there still exists the schools for the ignorant. Students of which spend every waking moment rocking back and forth, zombie-like, reciting en masse and pledging their obedience to JIHAD...
As long as these schools are allowed to exist there will always be a new crop of indoctrinated fundamaniac murderers who willingly eat, drink, breathe the myth of "Muslim oppression by the west" that they'll not have to think twice about who to kill. The Saudi's support of these "madrassas" have bit them in the butt. Maybe they get it now. Will the Muslim world get it? Seeing as how they are the best at torturing and killing their own better than anyone else, there leaves lots of room for doubt as to whether or not they will do anything of consequence...

Islamism is not a religion, it is a polical ideology masquerading as one. A terrorist ideology to be sure.

The religion it uses as a cover is Islam. There is a difference. A huge difference. A life and death type difference. A good and evil type difference. A God and Satan like difference.

I was just thinking. I remember something about a Saudi charity supporting Al-Queda. I just don't remember where. Al-Queda just bit the hand that feeds it.

moif was right on about this being directly in line with OBL and AQ's original, pronounced goals. They've always been about the overthrow of the Saud royal family and the establishment of a reactionary, Taliban-type Wahabi government in OBL's homeland. Part of what teed OBL off originally was when the Sauds allowed us to station ourselves in SA in the run-up to the first Gulf War. This is less an evolution of AQ than a "back to roots" moment.

Is Al Qaeda getting desperate?

I dont think so. You would think just because we have been de-rooting the organiztaion and have arrested more than 2000 of its members, that they would be getting desperate.

If your idea of desperate is, attacking in very small attacks and not major ones, then yes.

If your idea is that they will just stop the attacks, then no.
Al Qaeda will in fact bring in different and new leaders in par. If Bin Laden is well and operateing or if he isnt, there will always be someone to take charge.

al qaeda, hezbolluh, IJ, et al are banding together...pooling forces (IOWs getting desperate) and simply going after everyone. It IS their holy war. It's always BEEN the Holy War against infidels and little else. Yet the Non-infidels who call a spade a spade are criticized for not calling these lunatics the PC police sanctioned, "freedom Fighters." oh please, Puuuuleeze.

anywhich, 24 new infidels have been killed as of last night. Italians this time. 2,400 Italian troops who were working side by side with the British in Basra.

I think the fight against Terrorism is really going to be about the democratization of the Middle East. These terrorists came from repressive societies. To be honest, the Middle East needs to get out of the dark ages.

In many Islamic nations, Islam and the Law are one.
Ask nearly any Westerner if they think a theocracy would make for a good government and they'll look at you cross-eyed. But many Muslim nations have yet to make this leap forward. They have some catching up to do.

Actually it's 2,500 italians and they are located in the area in adn around Nasiriya.

Anyway, i think Al-Queda is getting desperate because they are trying to stop the Saudis, who have arrested almost as many Al-queda members as Pakistan has, and thus resulting in hurting their support in the Middle East. The reason this makes them desperate is because they can't stand to see their support wavering and they must get rid of the regimes that are not supporting them.

Out of the mouths of the Jihadists themselves, this is a "Holy War" against the infidels. what  does that possibly suggest to you? What is it about every one of these lunatics fighting for ALLAH against anyone opposed to ALLAH that is so foreign? It IS a war of religions. To the Islamic Fundamental it IS about the war between the believers and Non-believers. christian, atheist (they certainly dont believe in allah do they) buddhist, hindi, capitalism, communism, socialism IOW anything that is not ISLAMISM.

The question is, do THEY have a right to wage attacks against our religion, yours or anyone else's religion?

In the case of waging war, America has every right to wage war against anyone who attacks it. At one time it was communism, isn't communism a belief? Now is Islamic fundamentalism.   

Are we attempting to extinguish Islam? Islam as it has been prostituted by the fundamentals, yes.

To them they do. Catholics, Jews, etc are non-believes of Mohammed, therefore they think they have the right to eliminate us. That and the fact they think we are taking over their land

SoCaliente_1



Since we are waging war in Iraq, can I assume that you said Iraq attacked us?

Attack us? While we don't know for certain they played no part, we do know that SH would if he got the opportunity. That's more than enough in today's world to take action.

Maybe you're willing to sit around and wait for the next attack within our borders, most of us aren't. Thank God for that!

I don't see how you know that. Saddams links to terrorism seemed to be limited to pay outs to Palestine suicide bombers families and a rumour he may of met someone form AQ at some point. I may be wrong but I don't remember Saddam launching any attacks, terrorist or otherwise on America.
Just because you think there is a possibility of a country attacking does not give you the right to pre-emptive action. Especially on a country so heavily watched and sanctioned.



Clearly by the level of opposition and the lack of support by the UN it's not more than enough. It's just that America is powerful enough to do it regardless.

When you walk down the street you don't punch everyone who you think might want to, at some point in the future punch you.

You can't live like that, you can't justify war like that.

I think you are right.
I also think the Islamic world needs to come out of the middle ages as another post has said.
The western world for the most part went thru the same issues many years ago until the democracies decided that the separation of church and state was needed or there would be no stability in government.
Islam will need to come to this same decision.

I sort of agree with your last statement; but they have to come to it themselves; forcing it down their throats is counter-productive. Lets be honest though, the U.S. is only interested in spreading democracy when the party in power will do their bidding. Iran had a democracy until Reagan intervened.

However in doing this they are being diluted. As higher officials are caught and/or killed they have to promote from below. This in time will make them less experienced and more careless, in turn making it easier to catch them and prevent future attacks.

Moslems are not concerned with destroying the West. they would absolutely wish to convert everyone to Islam - but peacefully (much like Christians)

Im generally anti fundementalist and frankly dont see much difference between Christian fundementalism and Islamic fundementalism.

Millitants who kill for their religion are a different thing. They do however represent a tiny percentage of even the fundementalist wing of Islam.

Al Quaeda are no more representative of Moslems than the Serbian army in Bosnia was of Christians.

On the point of Moslems needing to be converted to democracy - -at the point of a gun?? What if they do not want democracy? Should it be enforced? - Obviously a contradiction in terms.

Al-Queda is just scared that democracy will create a loss of support for them (as if that is not the case anyway).

We have to install democracies in the Arab World to create peace.

Not to get too far off topic, but you can't just "install" democracy. You can install mildly corrupt dictators -- like we did in Iran, etc. -- but installing democracy means that the PEOPLE have to maintain it, and maybe... hard to imagine, but maybe... that's not what they want and won't be interested in maintaining it.

I think that Al Qaeda is without a doubt getting desperate. But then again, why wouldn't they? We've taken out Afghanistan and Iraq, two huge assets to them. And as we're at war and have a superior military force, our very presence in any area vital to them should be enough to make them desperate.

This isn't like Vietnam where our opposition is being supplied by the Chi-coms They really don't stand a chance against us, it's just a matter of time before we "finish the job."

Iraq an asset to Al Qa'ida? Exactly what evidence is there of this? Considering that the former regime in Iraq is something that Al Qa'ida were opposed to by their very nature - Bin laden never regarding Hussein as a true muslim.

Al Qa'idas main goal is "to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries". There were Christians living in Iraq under Saddam among other faiths, and even deputy primer minister Tariq Aziz was a Chaldean Catholic.

Reported by several boradcasters in the run up to the war, there was no link between Al Qa'ida and Iraq. Yes there were reports of their presence in Iraq. I also remember reports on Al Qa'idas presence in Britain - does it make us a huge asset to them?

It was only after the war that any reports came in of Al Qa'ida working alongside former Iraqi Saddam loyalists, and I think it is clear that the opposition to the US was the reason for this, NOT allegiance to Saddam or his regime. Again to refer to Al Qa'idas mission statement "it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens--civilian or military--and their allies everywhere."

Al Qa'ida source : http://www.terrorismfiles.org/organisations/al_qaida.html

Saddam showed no intention of killing US forces and her allies, despite having more resources than the terrorist network. Proof (underline that, PROOF) that Saddam was aiding Al Qa'ida has not yet been produced.

Al Qaeda is a brand name for a lot of regional organizations with no central command. It is more of a political religious and tactical affiliation than an organization. I don't really think that something like "Al Qaeda" can really be desperate or determined.

Of course Al Qaeda can be "desperate." It doesn't matter if it's a loose affiliation of different smaller organizations, so long as they have some form of unity between them. As we refer to them as a whole, and they act relatively as a whole, they can be considered a complete organizaion. And as they are united against us, and are without a doubt no match for us, I think that they can and are getting quite desperate.

Al-Queda can be desperate because if they see their attacks are not working (which terrorist attacks never are. 100% failure rate) because an attack can make a people more determined to find them and kill them for what they did

[QUOTE=Paladin,Nov 10 2003, 04:24 AM] Lately Al Qaeda seems to be attacking extremely soft targets, and the attacks themselves are not very sophisticated. The last two attacks in Saudi Arabia have killed more fellow Arabs(and Muslims) than Americans. Is Al Qaeda getting desperate? And will these tactics ultimately undermine support and recruitment in the Middle East?


[QUOTE]I think AQ has lost members and is left with a hard core of extremists who are willing to kill anyone OBL hates – which includes lots of folks in Saudi Arabia.

The danger to the US is IMO they will use WMD here if they can get their hands on them.

[QUOTE=Ted,Nov 24 2003, 09:07 PM][QUOTE=Paladin,Nov 10 2003, 04:24 AM] Lately Al Qaeda seems to be attacking extremely soft targets, and the attacks themselves are not very sophisticated. The last two attacks in Saudi Arabia have killed more fellow Arabs(and Muslims) than Americans. Is Al Qaeda getting desperate? And will these tactics ultimately undermine support and recruitment in the Middle East?


[QUOTE]I think AQ has lost members and is left with a hard core of extremists who are willing to kill anyone OBL hates – which includes lots of folks in Saudi Arabia.

The danger to the US is IMO they will use WMD here if they can get their hands on them.[/QUOTE]
Ted:

Don't kid yourself for one minute about AQ having less members. The middle east is a breeding ground for terrorist. Most babies are indoctrinated to hate Americans from the cradle. By the time they reach adulthood they are poisoned and ready to do Americans harm. They have an unlimited pool of individuals willing and proud to give their life for their religion.

By Bush invading Iraq, that has merely given them more ammunition and more recruits(as if they didn't already need them)ready to give their lives. You will never force these individuals to give up.

Are you suggesting we should have just sat back and waited for the next attack here at home? Would even that have been enough to convince you that it was time to go on the offensive?

Passion51:

I definitely agree with you. We should have attacked the country that send the most terrorist over here: SAUDI ARABIA.

That is the country you were talking about weren't you?

No,wait a minute that is the country that King George II ,his father and the Carlyle Group had business dealings with. I don't know what to think now.

Yes, Saudi Arabia needs to be 'enlightened'. So do Iran, Syria and North Korea, among others. But each circumstance requires a different approach. Saudi Arabia is now taking the needed actions to distance themselves from terrorists. We will have to keep up the pressure to make sure they hold fast. We didn't have that possibility in Iraq and so had to take a different approach.

Passion51:

So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq. We had more reasons to. About 15 or so of the hijackers were of Saudi Arabia citizenship.

Wow! So now we bomb Saudi Arabia because 15 or it's citizens were one of the 19 killers on 9/11. So you are totally convinced the Royals said to these 15: "Good luck & may allah send you to see some virgins when you die"?

So does that mean we bomb Kuwait? There are some Kuwaiti nationals in Gitmo who fought alongside the Taliban and belong to Al-Queda! The same for France? Richard Reid was from France! How about Britain? Or Australia? Or Germany? Do we bomb ourselves too? Jose Padilla was from Chicago!! We might as well nuke every nation in the world except China, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan!

So...what do you say to that?

You think this is business related? Get real

Well I do declare. I don't believe you got the jest of my last post. It was poking fun at the excuse to invade Iraq. Invading Saudi Arabia makes as much sense as invading Iraq with the excuse that 9/11 and Saddam were related. Of course King George II and his hosts managed to convince 70% of the people that Iraq was involved and even some of the hijackers were from Iraq.

But I am okay, I am still chilling out. Be happy.

A small precision to your point GoAmerica : Richard Reid is British, not French. Perhaps you're confusing him with Mr. Moussaoui, who's suspected of collusion in the 9/11 attacks.

Yeah. I always get those 2 mixed up when it comes to their nationalities. Thanks for the correction

guess you could be wrong. Here is a story that could blow this connection wide open.

William Safire: Al Qaeda's links to Saddam emerge
William Safire NYT

http://www.iht.com/articles/118851.html

EDITED TO REMOVED TEXT OF ARTICLE ALREADY POSTED ON THIS FORUM NUMEROUS TIMES - PLEASE AVOID DOING THIS; IT APPEARS TO BE SPAM -JAIME

If true, that would implicate Saddam's regime in the murder of 3,000 Americans.

And if false, then you just posted this thing again for no obvious reason.

I have a sneaking suspician ( a hunch) the Bush administration is playing this close to the chest. I may be wrong but, Bush has proven in the past to make other people spout their mouth off then come out with all the cards making them look kinda stupid and petty. Like I said I just have this gut feeling.

cusbilla

I sure would like to see an example of where Bush makes the opposition look stupid and petty. Are you sure you aren't talking about Bushs attributes.

Watch it with the Bush-bashing here, popeye, this is about Al Qaeda.

Look at Al Qaeda for a minute. They've pretty much been reduced to a bunch of people living in caves, but coming out every once in awhile with bombs strapped to their chests, hitting targets, but not really inflicting too much damage. They know that they're fighting for their lives now, as they certainly can't vie with us for land control anymore. It's pretty obvious who's the superior force.

If it were you in this situation, wouldn't you be getting just a tiny bit desperate?

To be honest I don't understand the question in this debate whatsoever. Bin Laden is not exactly a man who has been in dire straits (until 2001 that is), but a fanatical armed uprising is by its very nature desperate. The "warriors" of Al Queda are people who believe passionately that their way of life is being destroyed (And I am not debating the merits of their position...) and are willing to die to fight back. How is that not desperate?

Bean, I'm not sure what you're getting at. The people of Al Queda don't mind living in caves or strapping bombs to their chests, how is that a sign of change in their attitude? People who are concerned about creature-comforts don't join militias. People who are willing to martyr themselves don't care about superior forces. It is naive to think that anything less than a complete change in THEIR understanding of the West will change the mood of their organization.

I'm saying this:

Before we invaded, they had much more freedom in their assorted countries. They were an icon of power more or less, and were able to use that for personal gain. Now that we've invaded, they no longer have access to almost anything that they ocne did, because we're constantly on the lookout for them.

Anytime a person(s) goes through a huge change for the worse (such as this) they start feeling pretty desperate, especially when they know that their demise is "knocking on the front door."