We are witnessing the emergence of Al Qaeda Prime 2.0 and with it, an audacious new strategy. The 9/11/12 attacks are part of a grand strategy to further divide the West. A western world at odds with each other over financial uncertainty and worn out by war will now begin a debate over how to deal with a revitalized Al Qaeda and they have a few new weapons. As usual, the weapons are meant to divide us as if we aren't good at doing that to ourselves. The new divider is peace. The revitalized Al Qaeda is planning to make peace offers with one hand, attack with the other and secretly move its headquarters to Egypt. Some in the west will bite on this ploy, but a majority need not fall for it for it to be effective. Just enough to create more strife and burden on an already weary West.
[Update Monday 9-17-2012 9pm EDT: I am rarely surprised the lengths to which Obama will go to cling to power, but it is being reported in more than one place, that Obama IS actually negotiating secretly with Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda linked groups in Egypt for the release of the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdul Rahman. This would be the equivalent of releasing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Actually worse, considering he would stand on the throne side by side with Ayman Zawahiri to run Al Qaeda as they murder more innocent people. If true, Obama's shame knows no boundaries.]
Two weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks on the Cairo Embassy the Blind Shiek's sons, part of the leadership of Al Qaeda franchise Gamal Islamiya, said in front of the embassy, they were planning a major protest to pressure Obama to release their father. This also happens to be the stated policy of Morsi the leader of Egypt. On the morning of Sept. 11, Zawahiri's brother gave CNN a tour of the area in front of the compound to show how the protest for Rahman's release would be carried out. That is three important individuals who have well known constituencies, all working towards one goal. This explains why Jay Carney is so angry about questions that veer off the party line meme that, "This is just a bunch of child like third world street urchins getting riled up about a stupid movie".
Not even the MSM is swallowing that. They may not shout it, but they know this unfolding crisis is bigger than a movie.
Muhammad al-Zawahiri also made a fake "flag of truce" peace proposal to the west. His proposal was for the west to release all prisoners, including Rahman, and I imagine Ramsi Yousef and he would convince his brother to stop attacking the west. This is a form of "Kitman" which is to lie to Infidels to gain something in the name of God.
The close coordination of Rahman's sons and Zawahiri's brother under the knowing glance of a kindred spirit Morsi, is a whole new strategy. Obama's weakness is closely watched by Al Qaeda. Considering the many franchises, splinter groups and home grown wannabes, Former CIA chief Michael Hayden describes the Zawahiri core Al Qaeda group as "Al Qaeda Prime". On Aug. 5, 2006, Rahman's sons met with AQ Prime and Osama Bin Laden to formally merge with Al Qaeda. It is also being reported that the military style attack in Benghazi was the Al Rahman Brigade. So we have Gamal Islamiya (Rahman's group), an Egyptian Franchise of AQ Prime appearing with Zawahiri's brother, who claims to speak for AQ Prime, in front of the Embassy in Cairo and detailing their plan for that days mob action to CNN. Plus you have a formal video from Ayman Zawahiri, head of AQ Prime, giving the green light. Plus Morsi's oft stated goal and one of his favorite campaign slogans that like the Mob, He promises to bring back the Blind Shiek. Then you have Rahman's group storm Benghazi and murder the Ambassador and the staff.
It's not about a movie. AQ Prime is introducing us to AQ Prime 2.0.
Their new strategy here is create street protests and various attacks, not on US territory in North America, but in their home turf. Create enough chaos that it injects itself in to the American Election storyline. Since they know Obama has been peddling a "Look Away, there is no more war on terror" campaign since day one, he will be forced to pull a temporary fix to quickly tamp down the fires since he doesn't have time to actually change the narrative. The Chicago teachers Union rolled Obama and Rahm in the exact same way. When Obama tells the Russians wait until the Election is over, it is clear, everyone else in the world knows what he means, but many are trying to cement their deals now.
Zawahiri has heard the murmurings since 2010 that the US has reached out to the Taliban for peace talks. This has only encouraged them and completely undermined the surge. This is Zawahiri's attempt to trick Obama in to making slight concessions to Morsi like possibly allowing a hand picked representative to travel with the Red Crescent to visit the Blind Sheik. This would be ignored in the US media, but would be a huge Victory for the Egyptian focused AQ Prime 2.0.
If Obama scoffs at their peace offer, then in the Islamic tradition, it gives them the moral upper hand to declare a new fatwa and burn the embassies to the ground. In this regard, the peace offer carries huge meaning and significance. The AQ Prime 2.0 attacks in both Cairo and Libya are meant to create iron clad legitimacy and urgency for the peace deal and the result is Obama can't win. He has painted himself in to a corner and Romney was right to point out how the apology was not only moronic, but it played right in to Zawahiri's hands.
The Film is, as Mark Steyn called it, nothing more than a MacGuffin, or a plot device. It's simply a marketing device for the Salafists and Obama to latch on to.
Zawahiri planned this long ago. This is his coming out party. Support Gamal Islamiya and the other Salfists in creating a new Islamic party coalition called Al Nour. A Gamal Islamiya politician introduces Morsi to the electorate. Gamal Islamiya creates "Building and Development party" which joins Islamic Bloc Al Nour. They win second mosts seats, 25%. Use them to pressure Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood to play to the fringe. Plan a big spectacle for the 9/11 day that precedes America's presidential campaign. Obama makes "I killed Osama" one of his rallying cries. Morsi makes one of his rallying cries that he will free the Blind Sheik. Two weeks prior to 9/11 send Rahman brothers out to announce rally for their Dad's release scheduled for 9/11 at the embassy. On Sept. 8, have TV preacher Sheik Khaled Abdullah, the TV voice of the Salafists air the Mohamed video and rally the mob to show up for 9/11 rally that has already been scheduled. On 9/11, The head of the Al Nour party attends, Rahmans attend, Zawahiri's brother attends with peace proposal, Morsi makes sure to hold police back, have Rahman Brigade in place in Benghazi with vehicles, missiles and heavy machine guns. Zawahiri releases video that day to give the green light and establish himself as the symbolic head of the United States of Islam, and let the chaos begin.
Then he sits back and watches how Obama handles it and if Romney jumps in. As the American media scramble, the pressure on Obama to slip up intensifies. If Obama blames it on American activities or insensitivities, bingo. Having friction over Israel and Jerusalem in the mix is just icing on the cake. No matter which way Obama turns, AQ prime 2.0 wins and one thing is for sure, Globally outside of the US media bubble, the world knows Zawahiri is running AQ Prime 2.0, it is a revitalized organization, it can rattle Obama, and its locus of attention is now in Egypt, maybe even in the Sinai should they choose, because Morsi is going to play coy and ride this out. AQ Prime has nothing to fear in Egypt.
The movement of Al Qaeda's center to Egypt
Going back to the 1980s Ayman Zawahiri and the Blind Shiek Abdel Rahman represented a western sphere of Islamist Terror and the Afghani affiliated foreign fighters represented an eastern sphere. Picture West Coast rappers and East Coast rappers or the Weather Underground and the SDS. All Hippies for a common cause, occasionally teaming up, but almost always destined to break off in to splinter groups. Remember the Monty Python skit how the Judean People's Front can't stand the People's Front of Judea.
Zawahiri and Rahman were Islamists with the Muslim Brotherhood, who then branched off to splinter groups that assassinated Anwar Sadat for among other things making peace with Israel. It is important to remember that the hatred of Israel takes many forms, but the cover story for the Egyptian terror groups is its afront to Islam. The US tends to think in terms of bigotry, but this is bigotry with a cosmic chaser, which is why the Brotherhood worked so closely with Hitler's crusade to cleanse the earth.
These two Egyptians along with hundreds of others caught in the dragnet that followed Sadat's killing, formed cells in jail. Abdel Rahman formed the Gamal Islamiya and Zawahiri the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Blind Shiek's sons and nephews played prominent roles then and now. Zawahiri's brother also supported his brother then and now. Although they had their own terror attacks they would continue to cross paths and that lead them to Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden's group then was the MAK run by Azzam who it is believed was knocked off by OBL. This was the East meets west moment and Zawahiri became closer to OBL than Rahman, so the Blind Shiek went to America, never fully cutting off ties. Both of the Egyptians shared one goal OBL did not. After years of torture and confinement in Egyptian jails Rahman and Zawahiri both longed to depose the Neo-Nasserite strongmen and replace them with Islamist leaders and this was and still is their primary goal. Jihad against the west and the entire world was more an Osama thing, but an acceptable plan B for the Egyptians. Creating the United States of Islam with Jerusalem or Al Qods as Obama likes to call it, as their capital.
That brings us to modern times. Barack Obama has spent years trying to give the Tora Bora treatment to terror. It is a cartoon image of US as Superman or Green lantern and Osama Bin Laden is the sole villain in Gotham city and if you vanquish him by the end of the movie, you sell your weapons, buy a piece of land and live out your days in tranquillity and bliss. Osama Bin Laden is dead and the war has just begun or maybe this is the end of the beginning. Yamamoto masterminded Pearl Harbor and when we shot him down in 1943, we didn't pack up and go home and they surely didn't either.
In the Realm of Islamic radical movements, even in Iran, the west often confuses the political leader or charismatic leader with the religious leader. OBL was the charismatic leader, but Zawahiri was the Khomeini so to speak. When OBL died, the leadership did not change a lot, but the focus on Egypt did. Rahman has been in jail for two decades because of the World Trade Center attack of 1993, but his sons continued to run Gamal Islamiya carrying out the Luxor Massacre in the late 90s. Rahman the Egyptian and Zawahiri are kind of the old gang getting back together. When OBL and Zawahiri formed "Al Qaeda", "The Base", it was intended to be a gang of gangs, like the Mafia families all joining forces, but none of them being forced to fully submit to the center. Rahman's group came back to be closer in 2006 and now they are showing themselves to be very close indeed.
And while all of the sights and sounds we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history. Echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets. Ghandi leading his people down the path of justice. As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana, while trying to perfect his own “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tarhir Square.
It is a common misconception that the Sunnis and Shias don't mix. Not true. From the beginning the Muslim brotherhood shared a collegial relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini mentor Nafab Savavi who started the Islamist movement in Iran and waged terror campaigns throughout the 1940s. Safavi read Said Qutb's books which were a kind of handbook for the brotherhood and he came to Egypt to attend their meetings. When Morsi went to Iran earlier this month, he wasn't visiting to say Hi. He was gathering advice on how they came to power in 1979 by attacking embassies and he was establishing a relationship before setting the world on fire. A fire that the Iranians would benefit from. It might be considered an alliance, but at the very least it was meant to create an understanding of the benefits of what was about to befall the great Satan, Barack Obama's America.
None of this is surprising and I even wrote about the Blind Sheik and his prominence in Egypt the day before the attacks and how Obama was negotiating to sell them U Boats and give them $1 Billion to buy them. Egypt may not have Nukes, but with U boats, they will soon have an extra delivery method they didn't previously have.
Obama seems to have a weird blind spot for dangerous people. His law career and political career started out with Bernadine Dohrn, who was a prominent lawyer at the ultra radical Lawyers Guild. Her peer at the Far left legal group was Lynne Stewart, who gained her name working with Ramsey Clark, who formed the ANSWER Network, responsible for nearly all of the large Anti-War rallies since 9/11.
They actually formed in an office whose window looked out at the smoke from the still smoldering 9/11 attacks. Their affiliate group in Chicago hosted Obama's famous "Stupid Wars" speech against GWB. It was Lynne Stewart who defended the blind Sheik at the behest of Ramsey Clark and who later betrayed her country by carrying messages from the blind Sheik to his sons who were running Gamal Islamiya, the group that killed our Ambassador. She is now in prison for her sedititious acts, yet she shows no remorse. All of the major leftist groups still support her and protest to get her out, just as Al Qaeda struggles to get the Blind Sheik out. How does Obama end up hanging out with people like this? You don't see Hillary at these rallies? YOu wouldn't see Lieberman or Gore rubbing elbows with Dohrn or Lynne Stewart, but Obama keeps showing up. I'm not making any claims other than that he has a weird blind spot for the most destructive and dangerous people on earth, and yet, he calls Romney and Ryan newcomers to foreign policy, as if he is Kissinger or Jim Baker.
For those that wonder why Zawahiri might prefer to hurt Obama and not Romney, as we learned in 1979, they really don't care who is President. They want them both destroyed. This assumes they can be bargained with or appeased, which is Romney's gripe about Obama. They can't be appeased. What they really want to do is jerk us around and foment chaos. It is hard for westerners to understand, but even in Iran, more chaos is what they want, more war, more conflict. This is their version of Armageddon and the coming of the 12th Imam. More Chaos makes it move faster for them. And exploding Nukes makes it even more chaotic. These people are not interested in Nukes as a deterant. They want to see them blow. I never understood why the Wether Underground, the occupy movement or even the Manson family is so excited to see the framework of society come crashing down, as if they can go home, sleep it off and wake up in the morning with a Latte and a new copy of Worker's daily on the front stoop. What they would actually find is Zombie time but with no kick ass machine guns to save you. These guys plan to wake up to a 5th century version of "Virgins gone Wild". If that's their preference, who am I to judge? Not that theres anything wrong with that.
The RNC had their party in Tampa, Obama had his in Charlotte and now Zawahiri and AQ Prime 2.0 have had their party including TV cameras, fireworks, signs, bonfires and carefully polished video presentations by Zawahiri himself and an Egyptian TV rabble rouser that makes Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews blush.
The attacks on 9/11/2001 eleven years ago proved that a struggle within Islam for the direction of their ideology could drag us in to the mess. We are usually under the impression that we as Americans are driving events and Islam is not in our OODA loop. What Bush did was take back the steering wheel and "drive events" sometimes with unintended consequences, but it was not us hunkered down in the basement waiting for the mob to go away. What John Kerry proposed when he asked that we return to viewing terrorism as a nuisance like prostitution and what Obama's ploy to declare the GWOT over, bring the boys home and slam the media if they cover it... has done is signal to the world, we are willing to let AQ Prime 2.0 drive events, because Obama and the left have successfully worn down the will of the American people to maintain the energy level to remain in the driver seat. And now that the economy has driven us to our knees, if we did have any energy to man the gates before, we don't now.
Churchill once declared after the Battle of El Alemein in Egypt, which was the first real significant trashing of the Nazis that convinced his people they were no longer so close to the abyss, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." In this 21st century war with Islamic extremists, We have not seen that victory yet and have not hit rock bottom either. This only signals round two and they are on the march, not "on the run" as Obama declared.
This might be more akin to Dunkirk. We have made gains and are now watching them dashed. Whether we are going up or going down, September 11, 2012 signaled the beginning of round two. And as my father told me, "When I was a child and we sat on the rug and listened to the radio about WWII as we studied our maps, we didn't really know if someday we would be in Berlin or if they would someday be marching in Lower Manhattan."
They made it to Manhattan and I won't forget that. I'm not sure what Barack Obama thinks. With blood on the ground now, I do know he is not thinking "Attack".
His slogan is "Forward"? Today it seems more like "Retreat".
