The Al Qaeda Most Americans Know Is Basically a Myth at This Point

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/al-qaeda-most-americans-know-basically-myth-point

When I left Vegas last week, Mali was still the center of the world. I got home today, after taking a few wrong turns, and Mali is well on its way back to nowhere. Google News only listed 23 stories tagged “Mali” last week, and they were all about a supposedly secret Al Qaeda communique found in Timbuktu after the Jihadis bugged out.

This is just a phase, like your parents told themselves when you were 12. It’s the phase where the war reporters lag behind the war, and don’t get into town until the fighting is over (not that there was much fighting in Mali in the first place) after the French have tidied up after their airstrikes. Now, when the big fuss is over, Timbuktu and Gao are crawling with reporters who just can’t find much to talk about—because there never really was much to talk about in these teeny desert outposts, not even when the Jihadis were in charge. So Associated Press is screaming to anybody who’ll listen that its reporters found a vital secret document while snuffling through the trash in Timbuktu:

”TIMBUKTU, Mali - (AP) -- In their hurry to flee last month, al-Qaida fighters left behind a crucial document: Tucked under a pile of papers and trash is a confidential letter, spelling out the terror network's strategy for conquering northern Mali and reflecting internal discord over how to rule the region.”

That’s a pretty cool lead sentence, like the start of a good spy novel, until you realize every key word should have an asterisk after it, leading to a footnote that says, “Look, we needed a big story here—you know how much it costs to get to this stinking hellhole? So give us a break.”

[OldDem2012]

1. "Confidential letter"? How much you want to bet it originated in some back room in Langley? nt.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Al Qaeda is a group name for an ideology

Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by al-Qaeda's leadership. Although bin Laden still held considerable ideological sway over some Muslim extremists before his death, experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented over the years into a variety of regional movements that have little connection with one another. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, said that al-Qaeda is now just a "loose label for a movement that seems to target the West". "There is no umbrella organisation. We like to create a mythical entity called [al-Qaeda] in our minds, but that is not the reality we are dealing with."[35]

This view mirrors the account given by Osama bin Laden in his October 2001 interview with Tayseer Allouni:

"...this matter isn't about any specific person and...is not about the al-Qai`dah Organization. We are the children of an Islamic Nation, with Prophet Muhammad as its leader, our Lord is one...and all the true believers [mu'mineen] are brothers. So the situation isn't like the West portrays it, that there is an 'organization' with a specific name (such as 'al-Qai`dah') and so on. That particular name is very old. It was born without any intention from us. Brother Abu Ubaida... created a military base to train the young men to fight against the vicious, arrogant, brutal, terrorizing Soviet empire... So this place was called 'The Base' ['Al-Qai`dah'], as in a training base, so this name grew and became. We aren't separated from this nation. We are the children of a nation, and we are an inseparable part of it, and from those public demonstrations which spread from the far east, from the Philippines, to Indonesia, to Malaysia, to India, to Pakistan, reaching Mauritania... and so we discuss the conscience of this nation."[36]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. TPTB are dragging the old bogeyman out at every opportunity..

Yet I notice that reports of drone strikes and suicide car bombings identify "the enemy" as:
militants
jihadists
Taliban
Al-Quada
rebels.....
interchangeably.

Which shows that the news outlets reporting these incidents are either too lazy to check out and use the correct term
or
are happily printing the gov. propaganda as handed to them.
Actually, i guess that could be both.

[randome]

4. I would think sometimes they are ALL of those categories you list.

Except for maybe the Taliban and Al-Quaeda references, they don't seem self-exclusive.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Some of the UK press

have gone over to using the term "jihadists" as opposed to using TPTB preferred term Al-Quada which is related to keeping the public universally spooked. Broadly speaking that concept comes from Orwell's 1984.

To my mind jihadists is more accurate at least in some contexts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihadism

[whatchamacallit]

6. It works remarkably well

Even presumably intelligent DUers are happy to piss away their hard-won liberties for protection from the Phantom Menace.