Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) (37 page)
Read Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) Online
Authors: Michael Scheuer
16. Brothers, there is one more great advantage al-Qaeda enjoys through God’s grace, and that is the practice of all U.S. leaders to publicly define the status of our war against America only in terms of the detonation of explosives. There has been much proud crowing and preening among these leaders that al-Qaeda has not attacked in America since the blessed 9/11 raid, and a belief that therefore the United States is winning the war against al-Qaeda. May the almighty God keep them mired in this dream. Brothers, as those who read history know, war is much more than detonating explosives, and the mujahedin’s nonexplosive attacks on America, with God’s help, have continued with telling effect every day since 9/11. In this regard, I have learned the following in conversations with work colleagues and social acquaintances, and by reading the media and listening to radio call-in programs. I readily admit these stories are anecdotal, but I believe they faithfully reflect the apprehensive mood of many everyday Americans.
We are slowly changing their way of life. People here are upset and angry with the difficulties of air travel, may God smile on the blessed nineteen for this happy reality, as well as the Pakistani mujahedin in London who made our enemies quiver in fear over the threat to airliners posed by toothpaste tubes.
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People here also are appalled by security that requires the children of grammar-school classes to empty their pockets and clear metal detectors before entering an art museum.
In the area where I live, near Washington, people worry about the under-siege look of the city. One man said to me in wonder: “Roosevelt did not have this much protection in all of World War II.” I also have heard people express anger over what are at times invasive and militarized security procedures in the capital of the world’s most powerful nation, often citing the 2004 presidential inauguration as a graphic example. “We behave as if we are scared to death,” they said.
Americans are worried, thanks to God, by the spiraling federal budget deficit. Brothers, it is impossible to imagine the amount of money the U.S. government is spending on what it calls “homeland security” and on the wars it is waging to kill Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, and elsewhere. In 2006, for example, the Congress raised the debt ceiling to $9 trillion to accommodate the expenses of the U.S. war on Islam.
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The Iraq Study Group’s report, moreover, helpfully told al-Qaeda and its allies that Brother Osama’s bleed-America-to-bankruptcy strategy is working in Iraq, that Washington is spending $8 billion per month there and that it cannot sustain that rate. More recently, the U.S. media have reported that the strain is increasing and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is now approaching $12 billion per month. And a famous American economist and financier recently published a book saying “the U.S. Government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another terrorist attack.”
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And so when al-Qaeda next strikes the United States, with God’s permission, Americans will know that all this spending has been for naught, and that immense additional amounts will be required. We will then, if God permits, tear the heart out of their economy and their morale as well. As an indication of the future, the warning of more attacks issued by Brother Osama in January 2006 drove up the price of oil and gold and caused U.S. stocks to drop by 200 points.
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Imagine, Brothers, the damage that the mujahedin will cause when, if God wills it, our words are again replaced by bullets and bombs inside the United States.
Americans are frightened. I have heard much discussion about their worries of more al-Qaeda attacks—perhaps with nuclear weapons—and recent polling here shows more than half of those questioned believe that another al-Qaeda attack is inevitable and that it will be more damaging than that of our nineteen brothers, may God reward them in paradise. Moreover, Americans are both angry and fearful that the erosion of their civil liberties is worsening, because of President Bush’s eavesdropping on telephone conversations inside the United States, secretly accessing private bank records, and profiling each American air traveler. May God worsen these fears.
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It is as you have said, Brothers: Because Americans have not experienced war on their soil since the 1860s, they regard necessary war measures as evidence of incipient dictatorship. Brother Osama’s 2001 judgment has proven to be accurate: al-Qaeda needs to do nothing to terrorize Americans because their leaders and the media will reliably perform that task. And nothing clarifies that reality more than the enhanced fears caused, not by a new al-Qaeda attack, but by the mid-2007 publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on our presence in the United States and the media’s reporting about it.
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Iraq: God’s Gift to His Mujahedin
17. Before ending this message, Brothers, I want to specifically focus on Iraq, where the great and happy news is that God seems to have rendered U.S. leaders ignorant of the wondrous opportunities they have opened for all mujahedin by invading and occupying the country. And just as clearly, these men have yet to fathom the dimensions of the victory, and the surge of confidence they will hand to those fighting in God’s cause when they decide to leave Iraq, and later Afghanistan, pray God, without success.
Let us first praise God for a miracle that only He could have delivered. The Americans are now occupying the three most holy places in Islam: the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem.
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Regarding Jerusalem, U.S. leaders know but shield from Americans the fact that they are viewed by Muslims as interchangeable with Israelis. Muslim hatred for Israelis, praise be to God, also accrues to Americans, and will be increased by Washington’s recent gift of $30 billion worth of U.S. arms to Israel to help it murder Muslims. And by invading and occupying Iraq, the U.S. government has created a magnet for mujahedin even more powerful than that which Moscow created in Afghanistan, the first blessed land of jihad.
And, Brother Osama, by occupying Iraq, U.S. leaders, through their disregard or ignorance of your words, have made your predictions come true in the eyes of the Muslim ummah. You said: America will destroy strong Muslim states, and it did. You said: America will destroy Muslim regimes that threaten Israel, and it did. You said: America will seize Muslim oil, and it did. You said: America will try to destroy our religion and occupy our holy places, and it did. You said: America will replace God’s law with blasphemous, man-made laws and secular governments, and it did. Praise to the Almighty God for showing you the truth, Brother Osama.
And, Brothers, God has now properly validated your call for a defensive jihad in accordance with the terms of His blessed religion. In their intensely legalistic way, the Americans always took delusional solace from the fact that neither of you is a trained Islamic scholar. They convinced themselves that, because you lacked diplomas, no Muslim could legitimately answer your call to jihad; apparently they have never heard of another non-scholar mujahid named Saladin. But now the U.S. invasion of Iraq has called forth fatwas from many well-credentialed Islamic scholars. These decrees declare a defensive jihad in exactly the terms you used.
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Praise to God, the Sustainer of both worlds.
Most important for our movement, U.S. leaders do not appear to see that in Iraq they have opened a door for us to infiltrate our message and mujahedin into Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan and through the latter two to Lebanon and Israel. The late mujahid Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may God reward him, attacked Jordan and Israel from Iraq, and the leaders of al-Qaeda in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria have broadcast their readiness to attack Israel. Indeed, in the summer of 2007 our brothers in Lebanon stubbornly fought the Christian Lebanese army for more than a month.
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Brothers, the Americans see Iraq as honey to attract the mujahedin so they can be killed there; and President Bush and his administration teach the American people that if the U.S. military fights our brothers in Iraq, they will not have to be fought in the United States. Do they not know there are 1.4 billion Muslims? The Americans will understand this is nonsense when they find themselves fighting, if God wills it, the mujahedin in both places, and many others as well. Washington, thanks to God, fails to see that the U.S. military presence in Iraq not only gives the mujahedin U.S. targets there but also helps satisfy al-Qaeda’s goal of securing contiguous safe haven from which to infiltrate fighters into the Levant, Turkey, and the birthplace of our Prophet, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him. Even at this late date, Brothers, American leaders have still failed to recognize—and all thanks be to the Lord of both worlds for their blindness—that they have built a west-bound highway for the mujahedin that leads from Afghanistan through Iraq to the Levant and beyond. It will be too late, God willing, when Washington discovers that the flow of non-Iraqi mujahedin through Iraq into the Levant, Turkey, and the Arabian Peninsula is far more dangerous to their interests than the mujahedin entering Iraq from Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
What Next?: With God’s Grace, Press On
18. For now, Brothers, and all thanks to God for this, the good news for the mujahedin outweighs the bad by a large measure. But we must remember that the United States is a powerful enemy, and historically one terrible in war when it is ably led and its people are roused to united and focused anger. Based on my own decade of experience living and working here, Brothers, I believe the American people are much tougher and more willing to kill than are their leaders. We must always keep this reality in mind to prevent us becoming arrogant and overconfident, characteristics which recent U.S. administrations have shown through their constantly expressed contempt for the mujahedin as mere criminals: this, praise to God, is a devastating vulnerability for them. Our main advantage now lies in the failure of U.S. leaders to understand their Islamist enemy. Part of this failure is due to their woeful lack of historical knowledge, both ours and, most surprisingly, their own. The rest is due to the moral cowardice that prevents U.S. leaders from enforcing immigration laws and frankly debating their foreign policies because of the potential for negative domestic political consequences.
19. We also greatly benefit from the paralyzing and contemptible fear U.S. leaders have of fully employing America’s overwhelming military power, a fear shown by President Bush, his top political and military officials, and Democratic Party leaders when they repeatedly say the U.S. government intends to wage what they call a “Long War” against the mujahedin.
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By God, Brothers, this seems to mean that the mujahedin, with God’s permission, have driven the Americans crazy. They appear ready to sacrifice all of the advantages that a focused, unlimited application of military power would afford, and instead fight us in insurgency situations all around the world, a scenario where the patient and dedicated mujahedin will surely bleed America to death in terms of money, lives, and political unity. Truly, Brothers, these Americans are astounding; history suggests that only fools would reinforce failure by sending five more brigades to engage the mujahedin in house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. If God permits, Vice President Cheney will soon find it is the mujahedin, not the Americans, who have the “stomach” for such a fight.
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20. Also, Brothers, the futility of the “Long War” approach by America was underscored by Bush’s Iraq Study Group, which said, “U.S. ground forces have been stretched to the breaking point,” and that Washington has “little reserve force to call on if it needs ground forces elsewhere in the world,” which presumably also dooms to failure their intervention in Somalia.
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The Group’s report also said that the God-loving mujahedin had so worn out the U.S. military that it will take at least five years and massive but undetermined funding to restore it to pre–Iraq-war readiness.
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Praise to God, Brothers, al-Qaeda’s aim to spread American forces as thinly as possible to dilute their ability to focus their unprecedented military power appears to be succeeding. While it is hard to believe, God has validated Brother Osama’s prediction that al-Qaeda needs only to send two men carrying an al-Qaeda banner to any spot on earth, and the U.S. military will rush there.
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21. Overall, Brothers, it is my assessment, and God knows best, that the U.S. leaders’ combination of historical ignorance and moral cowardice is, with God’s support, a potential war-winner for the mujahedin. No U.S. administration can develop a strategy for victory over al-Qaeda and its allies as long as they refuse to listen to and understand what we tell them about our motivation. However, Brothers, it is necessary to continue waging war against them aggressively, ruthlessly, and globally; we must resist the arrogance which would cause us to rely on the Americans remaining ignorant forever. U.S. leaders may someday, and may God make it far in the future, recognize that their country’s destiny is in their hands; they alone can change the foreign policies that are helping the mujahedin’s drive toward God’s victory. Indeed, last year a Republican presidential candidate truthfully said that al-Qaeda attacked Washington and New York because of U.S. intervention in the Muslim world. But, and all thanks to God for this, his fellow candidates and most of the media ridiculed him and demanded he retract his words. This episode, however, points out that only the Americans can change the policies that are powering our campaign for God’s glory, and that fact, for al-Qaeda, is a constant threat to the effectiveness and durability of our effort to keep Muslims focused on the far American enemy, and not those so much closer to home.
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