Westward How?

In Battlefield Shifts Westward Jules Crittenden points to al-Qaeda orders out of Pakistan to launch a different type of strike in Britain. I'm not one to play down the threat of terrorism, but there's a rub in that article that gave me pause.

“Cells in the UK have been alerted to carry out this type of attack as opposed to the more sophisticated type of bombing in which you place a large number of volunteers at risk. All you need for a beheading is a bit of courage and a sharp knife.”

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

I'm not so much doubting the report, as trying to figure out the 411 behind the lack of such attacks in the past 3-4 months. Given the recent terror busts in Britain, it seems al-Qaeda is still, in a sense, reaching for the brass ring of a larger attack profile than individual beheadings requiring nothing more than "courage," if you can call it that, and a knife.

I don't so much disagree on the bigger picture with Jules, nor with Jeff Goldstein who responds to the item below from Jules here. Except that I think if we prevail in Afghanistan, Somalia and eventually Iraq, al-Qaeda's last desperate attempt to intimidate will be precisely what Jules points out.

And while all this goes on, it's the growth of some so-called moderate groups like CAIR which really aren't moderate at all, that concerns me most. We've proved we can defeat al Qaeda on the battlefield. Where the political battle will be in fifty years is anyone's guess.

It is only a matter of time before they turn their attention to the United States and “low-tech” operations here. And it is only a matter of time before they expand their list of beheading candidates to other sectors of the population.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

The Islamofascists have discovered KNIVES!? God save us all!

[Vinne Vidivici]

Why risk the backlash resulting from an attack -- large or small -- when the threat of violence or, more likely, the failure of large swaths of the public to take the threat seriously, seems to be working quite well?

Well-funded bullying by pressure groups like CAIR, faux-outrage over contrived offenses designed solely to gain concessions from a PC and greivance-obsessed culture, special pleading and gaming of legal institutions, inch-by-inch erosion of free speech rights excused in the name of 'tolerance' . . . all of it abetted by media outlets which present the Islamist agenda as a civil rights struggle . . .

. . . why bother fighting for what your enemy will give you willingly?