[MikeD]

Is it possible that they're actually HORRIBLE at politics? (Rhetorical...it appears they are that bad.) Bombing mainstream Muslims in Jordan? WTF? They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces...I mean, they do want to establish extreme Islamist rule over a worldwide umma/caliphate, but they're eroding their own base of support...the mainstream Muslims who at least tolerate if not endorse their actions.

(As in, "Well, I may not like them, but I understand why they're pissed and they're more of the home team than the goddamned Americans trying to take us all over...")

They're getting ahead of themselves...taking on the West and the mainstream Near East simultaneously is going to be too much of a task for them. It erodes their political and economic base and further limits the territory in which their presence is tolerated or accepted. Plus, they're falling into the trap which maimed the PLO...looking at terrorist acts as a means of war rather than a method of political grandstanding. There comes a point of diminishing returns with this stuff.

I know Michael Scheuer (the 'anonymous' who wrote Imperial Hubris and all those books) thinks of their actions as more of a form of insurgency (ie, small-scale war) than actual terrorism, and I suppose he's right. But it still appears they're going about this with their emotions rather than their brains. (Maybe the difference between Bin Laden and Zarquawi?)

MD

 

[Transcend]

Imperial Hubris was a pretty damn good book.

 

[Silver]

(Maybe the difference between Bin Laden and Zarquawi?)

MD

Bingo.

Bin Laden knows how the politics work. Zarquawi doesn't appear to have the same level of sophistication.

 

[fluff]

Al-Qaeda, or more accurately the militant Islamic fundamentalists that Al Qaeda is now seen to represent, lost their political base of support a long time ago. It was the initial diminishment of the political base that caused the turn to terrorism which then lost any realistic support from the common Arab.

The insurgency in Iraq is able to survive only because of the presence of foreign troops and an effective power-vacuum. Should the US pull out suddenly then there would be civil war but that is not due to Al-Qaeda any more than instability in Afghanistan is due to Al-Qaeda. These are states that are historically unstable due to ethnic mix and internal conflict.

The US presence unites disparate elements against a common enemy, some of these elements lack any real support and would simply die out if the US didn't keep fanning the flames.

The political power behind Al-Qaeda is normally seen as Ayman Al-Zawahiri rather than Bin Laden. Zarquawi appears to be little more than an opportunistic (and obviously charismatic) thug with a personal agenda.

 

[N8 v2.0]