A State at War

A State at War

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

When the al Qai’da terrorist organization under the command of Usama Bin Ladin and his Chief Executive Officer Ayman al-Zawahiri planned, resourced and carried out the September 11^th terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, al Qai’da was going after the economic capability of the United States. From a military science perspective, al Qai’da was in no position to tackle the US military directly. In Usama Bin Ladin’s 1996 fatwa against the United States, the unification of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations called for a Jihad against the American people. Usama Bin Ladin even calculated the tally in American lives that he believed would settle old scores and grievances against the west—4 million American dead. The number of American dead from the September 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks as well as all the other al Qai’da terrorist attacks upon US personnel, citizens and property numbers in the thousands. Al Qai’da has not achieved their goal of 4 million American dead and, in fact, the terrorist group is still seeking 4 million American lives, not counting any additional lives that the organization might tack onto the tally since the United States has responded to Islamic fundamentalist aggression. So it is important to recognize that Islamic fundamentalists want an accounting, a settling of accounts, for their perceived injustices at the hands of the United States and other western countries. To the Islamic fundamentalist, it doesn’t matter if the United States and western countries kills terrorists and other lawful combatants in war. Al Qai’da and Jihadi forces want their struggle, their holy war, to be a one-sided operation, whereby the targeted western nations absorb all the damage that Jihadi organizations inflict upon them, and western responses to such attacks require an ever-increasing tally of victims by Jihadists to avenge their fallen. It doesn’t matter to Jihadists where these victims come from, whether they are civilian or military—all that matters is that those Jihadi forces that are liquidated are avenged in numbers that exceed their fallen. A fatwa that calls for such martyrdom operations has its roots in Islamic irredentism. Since Jihad is the struggle to ensnare the entire human race into global Sharia Law, Jihadi fatwas calling for settling old scores will always reappear and they will be revised with new tally numbers. This ensures that the Jihad will never end, the “struggle” will be perpetual, and Islamic fundamentalists will loyally carry it out in search of their erroneous and anti-intellectual Utopian vision of a theocratic world stripped of any belief system and culture unlike their own. Humankind’s struggle with Utopian movements that claim to seek peace and balance in humans and nations always leads to structured violence and killing.

There is no such thing as Utopia. It does not exist. Utopia is that human belief construct that opposes nature and it is fantasy.

Al Qai’da selected the World Trade Center towers for attack because the World Trade Center was America’s centralized logistics hub of international finance. Since al Qai’da could never hope to defeat the United States militarily, they planned and executed an attack upon the US economy, and in the subsequent financial market chaos that ensued with the trimming of $3 trillion dollars from the Forex markets, al Qai’da expected the United States to negotiate with them and to remove US forces from the Middle East so the stated Islamic fundamentalist objective of destroying the State of Israel would follow. Al Qai’da miscalculated in their assumption that by destroying the World Trade Center towers and attacking the Pentagon that the United States would just roll over and submit to the terrorist organization’s demands. On the contrary, the United States has performed as our country has performed in the past when facing great danger by allocating resources and personnel to the War on Terrorism to defeat the fundamentalist Islamic enemy.

Leadership cells in the United States and abroad are beginning to figure out how the Jihadi war is being waged against the west by unflagged radical Islamic armies. The understanding of the enemy culture and its aggressive posture operating against democracies around the world is critical to repel the objectives of the totalitarian forces that seek to force their will over all of humankind. Resistance to the war effort by domestic democratic populations has always been a cornerstone of a democracy, and in the United States the same is true today. Special interest organizations that view any level of human conflict that involves open warfare operate very freely in the United States, a sign that America is strong politically and tolerant of views that go against the grain of real security conditions and responsibilities that the country faces collectively. No other nation in the international community allows such flexibility for domestic political groups. The American people in general can sense that this war, the War on Terrorism, is not Vietnam. While there was an outburst at the polls in the last election seeking to turn this war off without resolving the Jihadi question, the American people can sense that this war is unlike any other this nation has fought, and the American people will see it through until its conclusion is reached.

Recently the US media claimed that US intelligence was distributing more resources to the hunt for Usama Bin Ladin in northern Pakistan. Other sources have claimed that it is not true that the United States is specifically focusing on Usama Bin Ladin, and are instead preparing forces for the predictable spring offensive in Afghanistan. In all wars, there is a lull in the fighting in winter months, and upon the arrival of spring, combatant forces take up arms again to fight. While it would be unwise to think that Usama Bin Ladin is dead or incapacitated absent real evidence, it is unusual for the al Qai’da terrorist leader to remain off the radar for so long, so to speak. There has not really been any current video or audio released of Usama Bin Ladin that proves he is still alive after the United States went after Usama bin Ladin in Tora Bora with precision munition strikes deployed by aircraft and cruise missiles.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the other hand, is alive and well, and is being cared for in the mosque archipelago. Zawahiri has been producing and distributing new audio and video regularly and disseminating that information globally to the adherents of his Jihadi cause. A highly educated doctor by trade and global terrorist leader by choice, al-Zawahiri must be found as quickly as feasibly possible. He is an integral and critical leader of the al Qai’da terrorist organization that seeks to collect 4 million more American and western lives by Jihadi fatwa.

Western intellectuals must ponder how human beings can adapt a suicidal ideology and spread that ideology with terrorism. Religious violence is nothing new in human history. Belief in God and the desire to spread that belief by the sword fills endless pages of history books written by scholars. But there is something new about the Jihadi theocratic suicidal construct. In Jihadi suicidal terrorist videos that archive martyrdom operations, a western intellectual may view that evidence and expect to see a fundamentalist Islamic martyr reconsider their decision to become a martyr, or have some level of reluctance as the martyrdom process is planned and implemented. It is human nature to want to survive and suicidal pathologies strike a very small percentage of population clusters as a whole, perhaps less than five percent at any given time. Jihadi ideology however widens the pool of candidates for Jihadi suicide operations in much greater numbers based upon their membership population. That tells us that there is something else going on as martyrs are identified by Jihadists for martyrdom operations. The candidates for martyrdom come from all socio-economic walks of life, all education levels and across all classes as well as genders. The power of religion contributes to conscription of martyrs within Jihadi culture. We know this. But there is more going on because in martyrdom videos that archive the selection and preparation of the martyr for a final Jihadi operation against a western target, the martyr is seen smiling, laughing and appearing as if they are about to embark upon a great adventure into the afterlife.

Is the draw to martyrdom by Jihadi candidates religious as well as sexual in nature? According to Jihadi doctrine, a martyr can expect to receive 72 dark-eyed virgin women, land to farm with, farm animals, and other items that will be needed to survive in the afterlife. Since many Islamic cultures force Islamic women to wear veils and cover their skin in public, Islamic men do not receive the same type of socialization in younger years with women that western men receive. If Islamic men do not marry by the time they are thirty or so years old, their chances to find a wife in Islamic countries declines dramatically. This tells us then that young Islamic men are exposed to much greater cultural pressure regarding socialization than western men are, though organized western feminist movements are in their own way attempting to reduce socialization encounters between men and women in the west with increasing frequency. The Islamic male that does not have a socialized encounter with an Islamic female is the candidate that the Jihadi leadership cells are trying to recruit and they are successfully recruiting these individuals in great numbers. With the promise of 72 dark-eyed virgins and the simple things that Islamic men want to secure in this life, these individuals are willing to drive specially-prepared trucks with thousands of pounds of high-explosive into any target as commanded by Jihadi leaders.

The very nature of the Islamic system then creates martyrdom psychology. The inaccessibility of women creates frustrations in Islamic male populations, prevents a natural socialization of these men and contributes to their willingness to become trained expert and merciless killers on the modern battlefield. A large segment of Jihadi martyrdom psychology then is sexual in nature because it appears that the suicidal Jihadist is willingly volunteering to drive the largest bomb they can get their hands on into any target that may please Allah. The martyr believes that they will get something they cannot receive on Earth—a wife and the socialization that they desired for all of their young adult life, as well as the status of land-owner and provider for their family. These are very difficult steps to achieve for young Islamic men in Islamic countries.

The Jihadi martyrdom videos are filled with bright-colored gardens with plenty of water and unnaturally bright but mild sunshine. These are images lacking in the young Islamic male’s life, for desert and arid conditions are void of gardens, water is scarce, and the sun brutal. To the Jihadi martyr, the images created by al Qai’da’s psyops division to make these videos would be very appealing because it helps the young Islamic martyr visualize what the afterlife may look like. When combined with the promise of marriage, land, and a personal greeting from Allah, it is no wonder that these young Islamic men are smiling as they are being filmed driving trucks laden with bombs into their targets.

It is in this truth that western governments must understand the enemy that they are facing. The very foundations of Islamic culture, from dress codes for women to theocratic expectations of behavior from religious adherents, will produce vast numbers of martyrs for suicide martyrdom operations by terrorist organizations. The theocratic belief combined with cultural pressures upon young Islamic men is creating willing and very dangerous killers, some of the most proficient killers ever encountered by western military forces in the history of warfare.

If these ideas get loose inside western countries, it could change the complete landscape of governance of human populations for centuries in a theocratic totalitarian way. Studies should be conducted on the cultural implications of young Islamic men to achieve socialization. In western countries, the recent but real effects of radical feminism should be studied since it seeks to reduce socialization. These are the seeds of totalitarianism and the tenets of a nation-state’s own destruction. In fundamentalist Islam, Ayman al-Zawahiri understands this. He knows exactly what to do with this science and the terrorist organizations unified under his command are recruiting directly from pools of these Jihadi martyrdom candidates without restriction.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

To comment about this article, please use our forum!