Friday, April 20, 2007
Is Ansar al-Sunnah in Germany?
Stratfor reported this short note($) this afternoon, culled from the German media:
German media reported April 20 that the increased threat cited by the U.S. Embassy in a Warden Message released earlier that day could have been prompted by an Iraqi militant group. Citing security sources, Die Welt reported that U.S. intelligence warned Germany's Federal Criminal Investigation Office that Ansar al-Sunnah operatives had been observed surveying U.S. installations in southern Germany.
Bad news, if true. Not only would this amount to actual blowback from Iraq into the West, but it would considerably degrade the claim that it is better to fight them "over there."
16 Comments:
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Fri Apr 20, 11:09:00 PM:
considerably degrade the claim that it is better to fight them "over there."
Another view is that we've defacto won in Iraq and they're looking for less risky territory to operate on...
...which of course the Germans will gladly provide for them.
By 
, at
Sat Apr 21, 09:31:00 AM:
The Sratfor link requires a log-in, but without the benefit of reading there is zero logic behind your statement this "considerably degrade(s) the claim that it is better to fight them over there". Of the filthy vermin that opposes civilization in the GWOT, it has already been proven over decades that a) they are anxious to spill innocent blood anywhere and anytime they can and b) they already reside in all corners of the globe. So to sit around and debate what the venue of any of its attacks on us means is silly. The "blowback" argument is particularly mindless. THEY ATTACKED US FIRST, MANY, MANY TIMES IN MANY, MANY PLACES. THE USE OF THE TERM "BLOWBACK" IN ANY CONTEXT HERE IS PURE IDIOCY.
The West has two choices: a) take the fight to them there or b) let them bring the fight to us here. I don't think I speak for myself when I say option b) wasn't such a good thing the first time around. The back end of your comment as a path to the dangerous notion that if we would only depart Iraq and Afghanistan and turn Israel over to the drooling jackals on its doorstep, Islamist terrorists would leave us alone.
Apparently the gooey thinking of all those academic fools in the Princeton community permeated your head by osmosis. Good grief.uscinc
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Apr 21, 01:12:00 PM:
"permeated your head"
I am tired of reading arguments--often with lots of capitalizaton--that "people who disagree with me are stupid."
Personal attacks recruit no one. Grow up. Sober up. Or see a mental health professional.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Apr 21, 01:30:00 PM:
"Not only would this amount to actual blowback from Iraq into the West, but it would considerably degrade the claim that it is better to fight them "over there."
This logic is too simple. It works on the assumption that Ansar al-Sunnah (or whomever) had no reason to attack us before we invaded Iraq.
But as 1982, 85, 93, 96, et cetera demonstrate, Muslim terrorists had plenty of reasons. Also, as far as we're concerned, an overseas military base is still 'over there.'
If they had any wit, they'd pull a VT in three or four separate locations simultaneously. Say, a shopping mall, a movie theater, a university, and a restaurant in California, New York, Florida, and Illinois.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Apr 21, 02:15:00 PM:
DEC: All true, but in this one case unnecessary to say: "Locker Room" is an old friend of mine and former client, so I know that beneath the mocking there is only affection.
Dawnfire: If they had any wit, they'd pull a VT in three or four separate locations simultaneously. Say, a shopping mall, a movie theater, a university, and a restaurant in California, New York, Florida, and Illinois.
I've been worried about your scenario, or a different variant, for years. Not only are VT-style attacks possible until we harden the target -- probably by increasing the number of armed sheepdogs scattered among the sheep -- but I would think that targeted assassinations would have a huge impact. Most people with some name identification -- including journalists, most politicians, business leaders, sports figures, minor celebrities of all sorts -- go around with little or no security. What would happen if al Qaeda started picking such people off one by one?
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Apr 21, 02:22:00 PM:
Your explanation about Locker Room is noted, TH. Sorry, Locker Room. However, my comment still applies to everybody else who likes to engage in personal attacks on this blog.
My position on Iraq, etc. is simple:
I didn't think President Bush had the global experience to make the best decisions. I thought Rumsfeld was on an ego trip. Some of Bush's other helpers were a joke.
However, I do have confidence in Admiral Fallon, General Petraeus, and Defense Secretary Gates to do the right thing.
As every good executive knows, "You don't buy a dog and then wag the tail yourself."
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Apr 21, 04:36:00 PM:
If they had any wit, they'd pull a VT in three or four separate locations simultaneously.
Every day I thank god they're fundamentally morons. 50 AQ sleepers could bring this country to its psychological knees in a matter of months if they weren't so stupid.
By enuff, at
Sat Apr 21, 06:58:00 PM:
The UK, Germany, France…Eurabia(graphic) We've no need to be in Germany to the extent we maintain, simple logic should have dictated otherwise and our draw-down should have been a lot faster.
Israel has not been the sole canary for quite some time.
By Pax Federatica, at
Sat Apr 21, 09:29:00 PM:
DEC and TH: "Fighting terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here" sounded sensible at the time that policy was put forth by GWB. But if there's one thing we've learned about this war over the years, it's that that just isn't possible. It's not called a "global jihad" for nothing. We're going to have to fight them here, there and everywhere, and not just - actually, not even primarily in terms of military conflict.
By , at
Sat Apr 21, 10:00:00 PM:
I always thought that if we abandon Iraq, radical Islamists will then attack our bases in Afghanistan. Apparently, they have a more surprising plan... Well, if US military base means occupation, then Germany is long due for liberation, Ja?
By , at
Sun Apr 22, 12:21:00 AM:
While it would indeed be a nightmare, I don't believe that it is because they are "morons" that they haven't "pulled a VT" in multiple locations. The last thing they want to do is to put the U.S. on a total war footing. The terrorist can only win if we decide to give up. The U.S. voters would not allow our politicians to give up in Iraq if the terrorist starting killing over here (we are not Spain). Furthermore, "for public safety," we would imprison anybody that has shown any sympathy to a terrorist organization. While many today condemn the Japanese internments of WWII, they do so in hindsight with no threat to their personal safety. A domestic Jihad would change that equation.
By Escort81, at
Sun Apr 22, 01:46:00 AM:
I agree with TH's and Dawnfire's concerns expressed above. The particular scenario that I have worried about is 20 suicide bombers going off simultaneously at 20 different major suburban shopping malls scattered around the country. Malls are very soft targets. Throw in follow-up bombers as the first responders come in to provide medical treatment, just like Hamas likes to do in Israel. Maybe AQ picks Victoria's Secret stores as ground zero because in their mind it epitomizes Western decadence. Think of the effect on the retail segment of the U.S. economy (something like 50% to 67% of GDP) if people are scared to go to malls.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Apr 22, 02:50:00 PM:
I'm sure everyone remembers the Washington sniper attacks from 2002. I don't want to make the claim that they were Al Qaeda operatives, per se, but they were obviously inspired by AQ and there are some funny questions surrounding that case that kind of leaked out after a while. (concerning falsified documents and large amounts of cash that imply professional aid)
Point being, two run of mill guys with a power drill, a car, and a rifle managed to seriously affect a major metropolitan area.
Similar tactics targeting, say, truckers on lonely Western highways could shut down trade routes through the Rockies or the SW desert. 4 or 5 big rig drivers get sniped, and they'll stop driving there.
How about political figures? Your typical Senator or Representative doesn't have an armored vehicle. State executives make themselves available to the public all the time.
Pop culture? I've never heard of a hardened production studio.
Gay pride parades? A super sized shooting gallery of jihadi targets.
There's already been one failed suicide bombing at a sporting event in this country, which everyone apparently forgot about. Skip the big ones that get all the security, like the Superbowl, and go for A&M vs. UT, or Harvard v. Yale, or something. Or even high school. The way some bleachers and concession stands and the like are set up relative to each other, that's a 360 degree kill radius.
There's a traffic tunnel near where I live. Block it with a truck and walk up the line of blocked traffic back to front, popping drivers one at a time.
Want to play up the Crusader angle? Hit some churches.
It's really, really easy.
"The U.S. voters would not allow our politicians to give up in Iraq if the terrorist starting killing over here (we are not Spain)."
Are you so sure? We fought a monumentally successful war, destroyed a dictatorship and installed a functional democratic state in less than three years with historically low casualties relative to the forces involved, and roughly half the country wants to run away.
If the above scenarios happened, I know what would happen with this half. All it would take was 50 jihadis with basic weapons, a willingness to die, and press releases telling Democrats what they want to hear.
"It's Bush's fault. We were peace loving goat herders, until he attacked our religion. He forces us to do this."
They'd blame Bush. And then they'd use these atrocities not as rallying cries to destroy the enemy, but as political ammunition to alter US policy. Some of them would compare a massacre in a shopping mall to an errant bomb killing civilians in Afghanistan.
When struck hard enough by a ferocious enemy that gathers under a label and slogan instead of a flag, I think we'd turn on each other instead of on them. And you would know that our civilization had passed its peak and had begun its decline.
By , at
Mon Apr 23, 02:04:00 PM:
This comment thread is discussing a really interesting point that has been in the back of my mind for some time now. It *seems* really pretty easy to orchestrate and execute the type of atrocity that DF82 describes above. So, given a seemingly implacable, vicious, and determined terrorist enemy, why hasn't it happened yet?
It seems to me there are several possible reasons:
1) It's not easy to amass "50 jihadis... [who have] a willingness to die." I think this is probably likely to be true, in that it would be extremely difficult to concurrently recruit and indoctrinate 50 suicide bombers from the population in this country, which is a testament to the health of our society. So you'd have to try and get them in from other places, but that is also probably really hard to do.
2) It's not easy to plan/orchestrate such an attack, at least not without law enforcement discovering you. I actually don't think this is true. Given current freely available encryption technology, and a little cunning, it should be pretty easy to communicate with your co-conspirators securely and without raising suspicions, even allowing that the government monitors all Internet traffic.
3) It's not easy to acquire the materials necessary for such a plan without arousing suspicion. Given how easy it is to acquire handguns in some places, I doubt this is true; I also doubt that the government has any kind of centralized information regarding gun purchases (since that would raise HOWLS of protest from 2nd amendment fans).
4) The enemy is afraid of our retaliation, given sufficient (perceived) provocation. Despite DF82's dire prediction I don't think that we would all just knuckle under given a show of sufficient brutality. If the terrorist groups grow too bold and audacious, we will eventually strike hard enough at their funding source (e.g. Iran) that their operations would become unsustainable; it's perhaps likely that those who fund the terrorists have forbidden them large scale operations because they don't want to have their country bombed into rubble.
5) The enemy is not as implacable, vicious, and determined as he is given credit for. This would imply that there are few enough terrorists willing to butcher civilians who have not affected them directly (as opposed to, e.g., Palestinians attacking Israeli civilians whom they perceive as occupying their ancestral homelands - and please note I do not believe this is morally acceptable at all!) that there is not enough "stomach" for such an attack.
I think a combination of #1, #4, and #5 are the reason why we haven't seen, and will not see in the foreseeable future, anything like the catastrophe that DF82 imagines.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Apr 23, 07:46:00 PM:
"I think a combination of #1, #4, and #5 are the reason why we haven't seen, and will not see in the foreseeable future, anything like the catastrophe that DF82 imagines."
You were around for 9/11, right?
By Escort81, at
Mon Apr 23, 11:36:00 PM:
I have to agree with DF82. The fact that there have been no major attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 is not because of a lack of recruits (#1) or fear of retaliation (#4). While Phrizz11 makes some interesting points and observations, he comes awfully close to Michael Moore saying "there is no terrorist threat."
I believe that Islamist militants are not ten feet tall, so #5 is at least partly correct with respect to implacability, but they are vicious and determined. The Flight 93 passengers (once they understood their situation by calling family members on the ground who were watching TV reports) were able to prevent those hijackers from accomplishing their mission objective, so the terrorists on United 93 were hardly as skilled as U.S. Special Operations Forces.
It is good that there have been no attacks since 9/11, but Islamist militants have a longer view of time and history than the West, and even if they can pull off only one major attack per decade, I believe they'd feel fine about that.
If there is an attack on, say, the 8th anniversary of 9/11, against who would the U.S. retaliate? Pick any of the major presidential candidates from either party -- do you see any one of them ordering a major military strike without intelligence that absolutely links the attack to a specific nation-state or at least a locale within a state? The bad news is, that kind of intelligence (evidence, really, and the kind you can convict on even if the jury is made up of ACLU lawyers) is almost never available. No president for the foreseeable future is going to set themselves up for constant second guessing about a military response based on possibly faulty intelligence (and all intelligence is possibly faulty, to varying degrees). Even Bill Clinton is still criticized by all sides for his cruise missile strike on Sudan following the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.
