By Richard L. Dixon
“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual
duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in
order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order
for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any
Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all
together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or
This is in addition to the words of Almighty God "And why should ye not fight in the
cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated and oppressed--women and
children, whose cry is 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors;
We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be
rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money
wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and
soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with
them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Almighty God said "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when
He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a
man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."
Almighty God also says "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are
asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the
life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with
the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put
others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all
If there is any doubt in any one’s mind that we at war with a faceless enemy, then Osama
Bind Laden’s Fatwa’s for the killing of innocent Americans and others should be
evidence enough. We are at war with an enemy who has unlimited resources, loyal
troops, and a united ideology of radical terror. We are fighting an enemy on many fronts
and located on every continent. The enemy comes in many races, shapes, and sizes. It
could be your friendly co-worker or next door neighbor as evident by the background
information on the 911 terrorist. They don’t play by the same rules of war because
anyone that does not adhere to their eleventh century ideology of Islam is to be killed.
That includes innocent men, women, and children. We are fighting a protracted war
against terrorism. “Today’s terrorism differs in many ways from that of earlier eras, not
least in terms of the weapons it employs and the mass-media saturated environment in
which it operates.
Undoubtedly, both have had an effect on how terrorists ply their trade and how the world
perceives and reacts to it: so much was apparent from the use of simple box cutters on
Sept. 11, 2001, to crash sophisticated airliners into high-profile buildings, at the cost of
thousands of lives, and while the world watched transfixed via television. There is also
continuity in terrorism, not least in the motives which lie behind it.” (Mark Burgess, May
20, 2004).
Therefore, how do you define a stateless enemy which (let alone trying to devise a
combat strategy) has no defined national boundaries? How do you separate the religious
from the cultural and the political from the economical? TRADOC (United States Army
Training & Doctrine Command has applied the following variables and threat multipliers
(COE) has several common threats or constants for defining the environment….
complementing these overarching constants or factors, the U.S. Army describes eleven
setting. This assessment and analysis is appropriate for both real world contingencies and
simulate realistic and relevant conditions for training readiness, the COE is a dynamic
and adaptive process of being more aware, better prepared, and fully ready to counter any
adversary that could negatively impact on conduct of an assigned U.S. Military mission.”
3. Economics
4. Sociological Demographics
5. Information
6. Physical Environment
7. Technology
8. External Environment
9. National Will
10. Time
Hence, we have defined the threat variables of the faceless enemy of terrorism from a
military perspective but not a textbook or theoretical definition of what constitutes terror.
Once again I believe that TRADOC has the done the best job in defining terror from a
“Terrorism has been described variously as both a tactic and strategy; a crime and a holy
on whose point of view is being represented. Terrorism has often been an effective tactic
for the weaker side in a conflict. As an asymmetric form of conflict, it confers coercive
power with many of the advantages of military force at a fraction of the cost. Due to the
secretive nature and small size of terrorist organizations, they often offer opponents no
objective.” (TRADOC).
around the world has become a complicated affair because each one has a general
strategic point. “The connection between terrorism and political goals is related to the
perceived illegitimacy of political violence – especially in the West. This in turn reflects
the legitimacy of the liberal democratic state? As perceived by other liberal democracies.
force. Political violence against the state is therefore more apt to be termed ‘terrorism’?
With all the negative connotations the term denotes – than is political violence on the part
The difficulty in encountering and defeating the likes of Al Qaeda is that they view
struggle against the west from a global perspective and not from a nation-state viewpoint.
In fact, the very nature of Islam is foundationally founded as a universal banner that
unites all Muslims around the world regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin
under one religious banner. This explains the reasons why there are huge contingents of
foreign fighters from such countries as Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Sudan
fighting against the United States and its allies in Iraq. These hardened ideological
fighters view the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan not as conflicts between countries,
but rather a war that pits Islam against the great Crusaders of the United States, Europe
and Israel.
The face of stateless terror as we know it is both political and religious at the same time.
They are two sides of the same coin. They are indistinguishable from one another.
Stateless terror employs many tools, organizations, fronts, and criminal empires to fund
the objectives. These include safe houses, cells, charities, drug trafficking, disenchanted
youth, propaganda, brain washing, coercion, arms trading, and money laundering. There
are many terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to the FARC, Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the
Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood. For practical purposes I will concentrate on
Radical Islamic Ideology as espoused by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Radical Islam is both
political and religious at the same time. There are two components to its ideology:
Political Islam as espoused by the likes of Al Qaeda seeks to radicalize the Islamic World
against the advances which they believe is a decadent Western Culture. They detest and
oppose all forms of democratic processes such as women’s rights and religious freedom.
They practice an unorthodox version of Islam that wants to dominate and eventually
conquer the world under the rule of single caliphate. “My opinion, political Islam is a
contemporary reactionary movement; which has no relation, other than in form, to the
late 19th and early 20th century Islamic movements. As for its social content and socio-
contemporary society. It is not a repeat of the same old phenomenon. It is the result of a
Middle Eastern countries from the late 60s and early 70s as well as a decline in the
secular-nationalist movement, which was the main agent of this economic, administrative
and cultural modernisation. The ideological and governmental crisis in the region
Wahhabism is the most radicalized form of religious Islamic extremism. As the official
state adopted religious doctrine of Saudi Arabia, it has become a launching pad to
radicalize and eventually to convert the Muslim World to a narrow religious ideology
based on eleventh century precepts. “Wahhabi belief provides the religious and
governments if they deem the need arises. Though these movements are ideological in
nature, they easily resort to armed struggle. While most governments are able to reconcile
and reach compromises -- as one may easily compromise with a moderate Muslim --
extremists reject any kind of compromise, insisting on their way and no other. They have
tunnel vision, believing in a duty and message to deliver.” (Islamic Supreme Council of
America).
What are the conditions which causes young men and women to join Islamic terrorist
groups? What is the magnet that attracts throngs of misguided Muslim youth to such a
backwards ideology which eventually turns them into fundamentalist Islamic terrorists?
Colonel Brian M. Drinkwine in his entitled “The Serpent in the Garden: Al-Qa’ida and
the Long War,” spells out four reasons that terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda & the
“Poor living conditions and socioeconomic factors, as well as political repression, are
often the motivation for individuals to join terror groups or cells, but they are not the only
reasons. The Islamic based terror groups we face today have gained in number and
(1) Political repression within Islamic governments that have close relationships with the
United States.
(2) Lack of monetary financial sharing within Islamic states. The elites maintain the
(3) Resentment of the West due to the perceived exploitation of Islamic countries,
(4) The increasing credibility gap between Muslims (primarily in the Middle East) and
because they envision and long for a future that they believe will not materialize unless
they resort to violence. The perception of the United States as a primary adversary, us
versus them, is an underlying theme that has given rise to anti-American sentiment and
2009).
In order to defeat Global Terrorism we must first examine, correct, and eliminate the
conditions that sowed these seeds of discontent in the first place. That means improving
the general economic conditions of both the Gulf regions where autocrats and dictators
such as the Saudis have failed miserably to reinvest the Oil revenues back into improving
and raising the living standards of their citizens. It means that religious moderates such as
Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of The Islamic Supreme Council of America must
stand up to the destructive ideologies of the Islamist and recapture the youth through
education and a return to the proper interpretation and applicant of traditional Islamic
beliefs.
Just as important though, the United States and its Global allies must cut off the flow of
money that funds terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. It should come as no surprise then
that the biggest source of funding for the Taliban is the utilization of the drug trade to
raise funds to further spread and build their terrorist apparatus. “The nexus between drug
trafficking_ and terrorism is growing at quantum speed. This trend is not new: the last
twenty-five years have seen numerous links identified between drug trafficking and
terrorism. Of the forty- three officially designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs),
nineteen have been linked by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to some aspect of the
global drug trade and it is believed that up to sixty percent of terrorist organizations are
connected with the illegal narcotics trade…A terrorist organization and a global drug
cartel share many traits. Both oppose nation-state sovereignty, function best in
ungoverned spaces, depend on mutual shadow facilitators, have no regard for human
rights, rely on the hallmarks of organized crime such as corruption, intimidation, and
violence, and are highly sophisticated organizations that operate with the latest
However, I want to take the topic of this essay and turn it on top of its head by pointing
out that the United States made the bed that we sleep in when it comes to the GWOT
(Global War on Terrorism). Both the Muslim Brotherhood and 911 Terrorists had direct
economically. As one top State Department official put it, “The Saudi’s may be Islamists
Lest not forget that it was the CIA who backed and trained the Radical Islamic
“Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the
Mujahedeen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24
December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely
different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the
same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in
2004,). Hence it is safe to say that the whole notion of the Clash of Civilization was given
birth by the creation of Radical Islam in a region of Asia that had been known for its
moderation.
I point these things out and with solemn reservation about the path that our country is
taking strategic wise and what consequences will befall us due to the conflict in Iraq and
our involvement in attempting to put down the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. Our
involvement in Iraq was a hindrance that took our eye off the main goal of crushing the
Al Qaeda and Taliban cell network which at the time did not exist in the Middle East. It
levels within the Bush Administration. “Anyone seeking to understand what has become
the central conundrum of the Iraq war—how it is that so many highly accomplished,
consequential, and, above all, obvious mistakes, mistakes that much of the government
knew very well at the time were mistakes—must see beyond what seems to be a simple
rhetoric of self-justification and follow it where it leads: toward the War of Imagination
that senior officials decided to fight in the spring and summer of 2002 and to whose
image they clung long after reality had taken a sharply separate turn. In that War of
enough to wipe out the disgrace of September 11 and remake the threatening world.”
We now know though the release of recently declassified documents such as the memo
from between George W. Bush & British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the rationale for
the preemptive war against bloodthirsty madman Saddam Hussein was already planned
(regardless if Saddam Hussein complied with the WMD demands or not) even
considering using deception (such as painting the U2 Spy Planes with Combat Colors
which would force Iraq Air Defenses to fire at it thereby violating the no-fly zone and
giving credence for an invasion) when the evidence of WMD (weapons of mass
“In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and
Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a
private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime
Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second
said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy
adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.” (Don Van Natta, Jr., Monday March 27,
2006).
In initiating the invasion of Iraq, both the Bush and Blair administrations broke with past
protocols in establishing a strong man to control the various countries in the Persian Gulf
region when it comes to the flow of Oil. “The ousting of Saddam Hussein and the
subsequent direct occupation by American forces to secure Iraq’s oil were a decisive
break with traditional US policy in the region. It was also a dramatic departure form the
experience of European rule in the Middle East, where Britain and France had preferred
to install a strongman who would do their bidding, usually to ensure their uninterrupted
exploitation of local resources such as oil. If the local ruled defied the colonial power, he
was replaced with another strongman-in what today would be called regime change.”
In retrospect, the decision to invade Iraq and dispose of Saddam Hussein wasn’t about the
politics of oil, the invasion’s true intention was to cushion Israel with absolute hegemony
in the region by leaving the Arab states in a state of disarray without posing a threat.
Hence to say that this war was one with overly covert neo-conservative influences would
“The aim of the neoconservative/Likudnik foreign policy strategy was to weaken and
fragment Israel’s Middle East adversaries and concomitantly increase Israel’s relative
strength, both externally and internally. A key objective was to eliminate the demographic
threat posed by the Palestinians to the Jewish state, which the destabilization of Israeli’s
external enemies would achieve, since the Palestinian resistance depended upon external
support, both moral and material. Without outside support, the Palestinians would be
Sniegoski, 2008).
The mixture of politics, oil, and neo-conservatives influences in the Middle East and
Persian Gulf area by the Bush Administration and others have stretched an all-volunteer
military beyond capacity and have subjected us to other multiple threats such as the rising
bellicosity of North Korea. “The cynicism and callousness of foreign policy that closely
marries the interests of oil companies (and other powerful corporate players) with the
military and intelligence complex will be a touchstone for future historians when they
and into the Gulf War were all flash and mirrors, a purposely constructed optical illusion
to cover up the truth. As of now, the reputation of this country is still smarting from this
foreign policy blunder. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty
monster who needed to go, but the path of manipulation by the Bush Administration and
the neo-conservatives did not help our cause to dethrone him from his imperial perch.
What should have been pursued was the assembly of a coalition force in concert with
nations within the region in a coordinated military effort in disposing of Saddam Hussein.
This strategy proved to be very successful in outing Hussein out of Kuwait in the first
We are not considering the unthinkable of initiating a preemptive strike against Iran.
There are those who are now foaming at the mouth like a mad dog slowly pushing this
country into that general direction. Events that have transpired over the past few months
with student protest in that country following the corrupt presidential election, will show
that democracy will prevail and circumstances will take care of themselves. To invade
already fragile Persian Gulf region with Anti-American sentiments that will put the
If the United States and its European allies are to successfully defeat and defuse the
faceless enemy of terror, they employ different methods, tactics, and solutions in all
theatres of their operations. They must build coalitions with other nations such as Jordan
that they may not have been on the best relations in the past. However, their assistance is
greatly needed to cut off the flow of foreign terrorist operatives into the Iraq theater of
Operations. These methods if properly implemented will eventually see the dissolving of
1. OSAMA BIN LADEN, “Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad against Americans -1998,”
The Axis of Good and Evil,” Center for Defense Information, May 20, 2004,
http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=2224
4. Ibid., 1-2.
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=1564&from_page=./ind
6. Mansoor Hekmat, “The Rise and Fall of Political Islam,” Hekmat Internet
“http://www.marxists.org/archive/hekmat-mansoor/2001/misc/rise-fall-islam.htm
http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.org/bin/site/wrappers/extremism_wahabroots.
8. Colonel Brian M. Drinkwine, The Serpent in the Garden: Al-Qa’ida and The Long
#92 (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2009), 27.
11. Mark Danner, “Iraq: The War of the Imagination,” New York Review of Books,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=19720 (accessed
12. Don Van Natta Jr. “Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says,”
14. Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neo-conservative Agenda, War
in the Middle East, and the National Interest, (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2008), 5.
15. Wayne Madsen, Jaded Tasks, Brass Plates, Black Ops, & Big Oil: The Blood
Politics of George Bush & Co., (Walterville, OR: Trine Day Publishers, 2006), xx.