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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (189239)	6/13/2006 10:35:45 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

It often comes as a surprise to people to discover that bin Laden has never claimed that al-Qaeda can or would defeat the US, much less that al-Qaeda's goal was to destroy the "American way of life" or "Western civilization". He is not a man given to grandiose pronouncements and has limited his goal to incrementally increasing the pain inflicted on the US and its allies to force them to disengage from the Middle East to the greatest extent possible. If achieved, bin Laden believes, this would then allow al-Qaeda and its allies to focus on its main targets: the tyrannies that rule most Arab states, and the State of Israel. In examining where bin Laden thinks he stands in attaining this goal, it is also vital to understand that he has never claimed that al-Qaeda could achieve this goal by itself. Quite the contrary, he has consistently maintained that al-Qaeda is only the vanguard of the large-scale movement that is needed to achieve this goal. The working title of my first book on al-Qaeda was Allah's Humble Incendiary. That title was not used, but I believe that it remains a useful shorthand summary of the role bin Laden seeks for himself and al-Qaeda in the present war. He intends to be the instigator and inspirer of Muslims to follow the path of jihad and aims to agitate their souls until they do so. Even in this, he claims no original role for himself, explaining that he is honored to "provide our ummah [community] with the inspiration it requires" [1] because "Allah asked it from the best of humans, the Prophet". [2] It is in this context that bin Laden assesses the current status of the effort he publicly launched in 1996. "I must say," bin Laden re-emphasized just after the September 11 attacks in the US, "that my duty is just to awaken Muslims, to tell them what is good for them and what is not ... Al-Qaeda was set up to wage jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. Every anti-Islamic element is afraid of it. Al-Qaeda wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily lives of Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship." [3] atimes.com