A Quote by Evan Kohlmann
The recent arrest of Younis Tsouli in the United Kingdom was no doubt a significant victory in the war against online terrorism. Tsouli was one of a very select few individuals who have successfully used the Internet as a means to network and share resources with a host of Al-Qaida-linked terrorist organizations.
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Courts are grappling with what it means to be 'part of' al Qaida or the Taliban - every case poses a unique challenge, involving individuals with a different degree and type of connection to these terrorist organizations.
We knew that al-Qaida was a threat to our country. We knew that the Clinton administration understood this and was working against al-Qaida We did not ignore al-Qaida. We spent a lot of our time thinking about terrorism, what should we do about it.
The center of gravity for opposition shifts to Idlib province and Idlib city. That city is dominated by the al-Qaida wing of the opposition and other Salafist forces. The United States and the West cannot support those Salafists and al-Qaida. It means that the rebels are going to have a very hard time getting significant amounts of support.
Al-Qaida became the new Soviet Union, and in the process, Bin Laden became a demonic, terrifyingly powerful figure brooding in a cave while he controlled and directed the al-Qaida network throughout the world. In this way, a serious but manageable terrorist threat became grossly exaggerated.
Today, few terrorist organizations still employ the 'al-Qaeda model' in which individuals travel to terrorist training camps overseas and then are deployed to the West to inflict atrocities.
The problem, of course, is that the vacuum left by Younis Tsouli is quickly being filled by a larger, anonymous group of new cyber terrorists who are competing to follow in his legacy. He has become the inspiration for a second generation of "cyber terrorists" who are studying and learning from his mistakes.
The ironic factor that is between the Houthis and al-Qaida, that is, they both have strong anti-American sentiment. For example, the slogan of the Houthis is death to America and death to Israel and God curse the Jews and victory to Islam. And besides that, there is very little in common between al-Qaida and the Houthis as far as ideology goes, but they see themselves as having a common enemy, which is America. And America is in a situation, where the Houthis are fighting al-Qaida quite viciously on the ground, yet now the Americans are allied with Saudi Arabia in strikes against the Houthis.
The fight against terrorism is a legitimate fight. And certainly whoever commits terrorism should be brought to justice. Unfortunately, the United States and a few other governments have used the war on terrorism as a way of violating human rights.
One of the themes of 'The Longest War,' my book, which came out before the Arab spring happened, was how al-Qaida and bin Laden was losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, not because the United States was winning them, but because al-Qaida was simply losing them.
The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US . . .
Al Qaida changes; Al Qaida adapts. We have to adapt as well. We rely on resources to do that. Reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts.
In military terms, if you're not winning, sometimes you are losing. We've seen the Taliban and associated terrorist organizations make gains in recent years. It's time to stop those gains and roll them back. There's a lot of different techniques to do so, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to once again become an ungoverned country from which terrorist organizations can launch attacks against the United States and our citizens.
Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get... to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations against the United States even as we speak here.
This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States.
Despite recent media reports that have clouded, or even misrepresented, the facts, there is compelling evidence that al-Qaida and Iraq have been linked for more than a decade.
Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.
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