As the story of the Boston Marathon bombers enfolds, it's providing a good example of how jihad recruits potential terrorists.
The Tsarnaev brothers emigrated here from Chechnya and Dagestan, mostly Muslim areas in the Caucasus known for terrorist activity.
The Chechens are almost alone in the Muslim world in having an actual grievance. Chechnya was conquered by Russia in 1859, but after the Soviet Empire imploded, the Chechen sought independence. After a couple of fairly bloody wars, the Chechens were subdued,but with incredible brutality by the Russian forces including shelling of civilians in Grozny, the capital.
For their own part, the Chechens carried out a series of terrorist atrocities after the war, including one in Moscow in 2002 in which a group of Chechen militants took 800 people hostage in a movie theater. Chechens were also part of the forces that carried out an attack on a school in Beslan that involved the rape and murder of a number of the hostages and the deaths of over 330 people, about half of them children. There was also al-Qaeda participation in Beslan.The chief financier of the 'operation' was Abdul Omar al-Saif, a Saudi.
I cite this not because we need to 'understand their rage' as Pravda-on-the-Hudson would have it.America did nothing to deserve 9/11, and Boston didn't deserve the horrifc Marathon bombings. I mention it because it's important to get a sense of the historical 'narrative' the Tsarnaev brothers were raised on. It made them predisposed to the idea of violent jihad and good pickings for jihadis looking for recruits.
Because that's exactly how it's done.The majority of mosques and madrassahs in the non-Muslim world are funded by the Saudis and the Emirates and controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, usually through the North American Islamic Trust( NAIT). The imams are almost always chosen by the Muslim Brotherhood or by the Arab financiers to push the Wahabi brand of Islam.As young Muslim men (and increasingly, Muslimas) frequent these institutions, they come more and more under the influence of those whom run them. Conversations happen, the indoctrination proceeds, likely candidates are identified and perhaps the potential jihadi is given a small 'mission' in the home country to perform, something illegal but not too significant if it should go wrong. After they're groomed, many times they're sent back to the Old Country for jihadi training, which is likely what happened to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother when he went back to Chechnya and perhaps even Afghanistan six months ago.
What we're seeing here now is jihad as franchise. It's not even necessary for al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Lashkar e tieba or Hamas to have one of their agents directly involved anymore, although in the case of the Boston Bombers there's a good chance they had a controller, someone to oversee things, help them plan and facilitate things.
The two brothers both evidenced significant support for Islamism and jihad in their social media pages, especially YouTube and the Russian language site VK. There's no doubt about their commitment to violent jihad against the infidel.
The Underwear Bomber was prepared and used in exactly the same way.
We will eventually find that a radical mosque along with a Saudi funded imam was a big influence on the Tsarnaevs. They were groomed for jihad.
The next question, the obvious one, is how do we, as an open society defend ourselves against jihad terrorism, especially if it comes from within, as it did with the Tsarnaevs.
We can, and I'll address it in a subsequent essay, but I'll give you a hint. The answer isn't denial, or downplaying the part an increasingly mainstream part of Islam plays in what's going on.
That's a recipe for suicide.
UPDATE: Bingo..we have our Saudi-funded radical Muslim Brotherhood mosque.
"Amercia did nothing to deserve 911." While this may be true, I doubt anyone would find a single America who truly believes that. The standard narrative on this is America has, at a minimum, done the following. 1.)Assisted Israel in stealing Palestinian Arab land and brutally suppressing these people who had their land and property unjustly stolen. 2.)Supported Brutally oppressive governments in Arab lands that acted against the will of those people and viciously violated their rights. 3.)Conspired with the British to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian government in order to steal Iranian oil.
ReplyDeleteSo from the perspective of most of the world and a majority of Americans, America did plenty to invite 911. Please understand I'm NOT suggesting I agree with the standard narrative. Nevertheless it is the narrative and if we are ever going to get the kind of help we need to confront the Islamic terrorism problem plaguing us we are going to need to do a much better job addressing the narrative.
Furthermore the standard approach taken by much of the media and education elites could be summed up as follows. "America, bad, America's adversaries and wanna be adversaries, good." While America is far from perfect like any other nataion, the reality is far more complicated than the standard narrative put forth by the above mentioned groups. Fortunately I think a majority of Americans probably do at least grasp that. As for most Europeans and others whose support we are going to need to confront this problem, do they get that? I'm not so sure they do. In fact, much evidence would seem to suggest they cling to the standard narratives on this.
The bottom line is in order to get the support we are going to need to deal effectively with this problem we are going to need to do a better job of addressing this narrative. So far we haven't done very well in this area.
You correctly point out the brutality of the Russian forces. War is supposed to be brutal Rob. If I lived next door to an Islamic terrorist hotbed, I'd probably expect my government to brutally suppress it. Russia has not had much trouble with them since that time. American leaders should study Russian military tactics and strategy. They'd learn a great deal!!
With that said few Americans seem to be aware of the situation in Chechnya and what happened. Had American forces behaved in this manner there would likely be UN tribunals and top American leaders including the President would be either looking at massive jail time or would be unable to leave the US. There'd also be massive economic sanctions against the US as well. Yet Russia gets away with it. I think it comes down to Russia is much better at public relatiosn than America is and it does not face as much hostile scrutiny as America does.
Furthermore the Islamic problems that Russia, China, and some other countries face are largely limited to areas near their countries such as Chechnya for Russia. In contrast Muslims throughout the world are sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and the nations who support them against the US.
Essentially the US has a much bigger problem with this than either Russia or China. Also, the US does not have the conventional or non conventional military capabilities that Russia has and it lacks the conventional military capabilities that China has. Also, America's intellegence services lack the skills of their counterparts in Russia as China.
I'm not writing this to be pessimistic but instead to point out the gravity of the problem. Once we are aware of the situation and can face up to it, we can begin to formulate solutions that will work for us.
"...how do we as an open society defend ourselves against jihad terrorism, especially if it comes from within, as it did with Tsarnaevs."
ReplyDeleteDuring WWII the US government practiced internment against native Japense. The threat posed by Japan was no where close to as severe as the threat posed by Jihad terrorists nor could it ever have been. With that said America is a different country today than it was in the early 1940s. Also, the Islamic Jihad enemy and the nations who support it are not the same as Imperial Japan.
As such, the strategies used to defeat and/or neutralize this enemy are going to be different than the ones used to win WWII. As I pointed out in the aftermath of 911, great places to start would be to recognize our immigration system is a giant cluster f*ck that needs to be fixed. In order to give ourselves breathing space to address the problem, a 10 year moratorium should be placed on all immigration. This would give us breathing space to address and correct the problem. An idefinite moratorium should be placed on immigraation from Muslim nations. After all it makes little sense to invite people into your home who wish to harm you.
Additionally we know which people are most likely to carry out these acts of war. As such, the mosques should be closely monitored.
Also, we should develop all of our own oil and gas reserves and build more refineries. Increasing our domestic oil production and our refining capacity would give us more leverage to negotiate with oil suppliers many of whom do not have our best interests at heart. Right now we have next to no leverage when dealing with these people.
Unfortunately we undertook NONE of these suggestions post 911. Had we done so we might have been able to thwart the actions of th Tsarnaev brothers. At the very least we would have had a fighting chance to detect their actions when entering or leaving the US to go back to their homelands.
Not only did we do NOTHING I suggested, we have additional problems now we did not have back on 9-12-11. We added a massive national debt and our military forces have been worn down and allowed to degrade substantially to the point that even basic national defense is going to be problematic against a first rate military power or a determined less than first rate military power and due to the huge national debt, struggling economy, crumbling infrastructure, and a shortage of trained personnel to address these problems fixing this is going to be a major challenge.
I could not agree with you more that denial of the situation or downplaying is a recipe for suicide. I must say you are one of the most insightful bloggers on the internet. I very much look forward to reading about your proposed solutions.