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Monday, November 22, 2010

A Couple Fries Short of a Happy Meal

Our jihadi enemies top out the scales on murderous rage, but they aren't always the brightest stars in the firmament. The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula whackjobs are just now figuring out that big attacks like 9/11 aren't the easiest to carry out:

The group says it's part of a new strategy to replace spectacular attacks in favor of smaller attacks to hit the U.S. economy, according to the special edition of the online magazine, made available by both Ben Venzke's IntelCenter, and the Site Intelligence Group.

"To bring down America we do not need to strike big," the editors write. With the "security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch" thereby circuventing U.S. security, they conclude.
While I'm grateful that their powers of logic are this weak, I figured this one out days after 9/11:

The aerial suicide attacks on our people and the symbols of our power took enormous amounts of time to carry out. This is one weakness of our enemy. While they may carry out small attacks using small arms or small bombs at a moment's notice, truly horrific attacks require time because they must be planned in the shadows to avoid detection. We must increase our ability to detect such preparations and make sure the information is interpreted to provide timely and specific warnings. Then, the people who need this information must actually get the warning in time to take actions.

Mocking aside, this is a real threat to us. If the enemy can set loose jihadis in our country, they could cause a lot of death and destruction at the retail level, with small numbers of deaths at a time. It won't be as spectacular as a major operation that kills hundreds or thousands, but it will sow terror. And that is the point, even if our enemies have wasted time the last 9 years trying to top 9/11.

Don't let up chasing these guys and killing them. And push and help the Moslem world to reform so that Islam itself takes care of the problem. That's the only long-term solution to resolving this with minimal loss of life.