July 2,
2008: Al Qaeda has had a bad year,
having been crushed in Iraq and having a hard time doing much damage anywhere
else. But on the Internet , the Sunni terrorist organization is expanding its
activities. Last year, it's Information War operation, as Sahab, put 97 videos onto the web. These
tend to be gory clips of people getting killed by Islamic radicals. Two years
earlier, less than twenty videos were put out. There are even more audio files,
pictures and documents posted to the Internet, where thousands of pro-terrorism
web sites pick them up and pass them along. Al Qaeda's number two guy, Egypian
Ayman al Zawahiri (the real brains behind the operation) even offered to answer
questions posted to pro-terrorist web sites. Within seven months, nearly two
thousand such queries, and he has since answered over 300 of them, even some
hostile ones.
Fortunately,
for all this effort, al Qaeda's fan base is more smoke than fire. While al
Qaeda supporters number in the millions, actual operators, people who are
actually doing something, number only in the thousands. There are a lot of
terrorist wannabes, who love to talk the talk, but never follow up. This has
long been a problem in the Moslem world, where many believers take the meaning
of the word "Islam" ("submission") a little too literally. American diplomats,
and U.S. Army Special Forces operators, who have worked in Moslem nations for
decades, have long complained about how long it takes to get anyone to actually
do something. Lots of talk, little action.
In Iraq,
Western trainers of the new army and police force complained of this lassitude,
and willingness to say one thing, and do nothing. This leads to another
problem, that of assuming Moslems who have adopted Western ways (efficiency,
innovation and good planning) truly represent the Moslem world. They don't.
Most Moslems, particularly those in the Middle East, live under the rule of
corrupt dictators. The tyranny and corruption have been around for thousands of
years, and it isn't going away quickly. "Real Moslems" are suspicious and
paranoid, which is necessary if you are going to survive where they live.
Speaking to them of "democracy" and "good government" is like trying to explain
television to someone who's never seen one before, and doesn't even have a word
for such infernal devices. This explains the Islamic conservatives hostility to
TV, computers, videos and the Internet. Yes, they will use these things, but
once in power, will impose severe restrictions on what you can actually do with
those gadgets.
It's a
whole different world in there, and most Westerner's haven't a clue. Even
expatriates who work in Moslem countries were shocked, on September 11, 2001,
when they witnessed so many of the locals celebrating the slaughter. It's human
nature to distrust, fear and actively hate what we don't know and understand,
and that's what is still happening in the Moslem world.
