Jihadists are Laughable

[preemptingyou03]

Why do we beef them up as tactical and strategic geniuses?
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1908&cid=2&sid=38

Rebel Without a Chance
Reviewing Abu al Zarqawi’s Unimpressive Track Record
By Nicholas M. Guariglia
June 9, 2006

It was only a few weeks ago that the infamous head-lopper Abu Musab al Zarqawi revealed his face to the world for the first time. Until this recent video, he had only appeared on tape slicing necks in black pajama outfits and behind the veil of a ninja mask. Conspiratorial websites and Arab sheikhs assured the rest of us that the head of al Qaida in Iraq was either dead or captured for a long time, or a make-believe nonexistent scapegoat altogether, which the West manufactured to blame all of its problems on. In his last message, the Jordanian murderer called for continued attacks on Iraqi civilians, lectured Iraqis for electing and forming a unity government, and yet again declared war on the Iraqi Shi’a majority.

In the video, this supposed hater of Western globalization just happened to be sporting New Balance tennis shoes, as he pranced and frolicked around his desolate enclave while unsuccessfully attempting to fire his weapon into sand dunes. He eventually calls for the assistance of an apparently smarter crony of his to teach him how automatic weaponry operates. And if this bumbling and blundering wasn’t enough, in classic slapstick Moe-Larry-Curly fashion, one of the al Qaida leader’s henchmen hands his weapon to an associate, who in turn grabs the gun by the smoldering red-hot barrel, stupidly burning his hand (I wonder if sensitive Abu kept any aloe with him in case of such a tragic occurrence?).

But with the fantastic news of his assassination, Mr. al Zarqawi –– purportedly now participating in the pedophilic eternal reward of deflowering virgins –– will no longer be able to provide us with such comedic routines. He is now likely in a far worse place than the Sunni Triangle, dealing with even far scarier people than the professional killers and man-hunters of Task Force 145. Nor will the so-called “prince of al Qaida” ever disunite a head from a neck in a grizzly Aztec-like manner, or detonate a car in a crowded market, or commit any of his sadistic atrocities again –– including his first crime as a youngster, the vicious rape of a small girl (call it a “gateway crime,” if you will).

Secretary Rumsfeld had it right when he surmised nobody on this planet had killed more people in the last few years than the now-dead terrorist chief. But with that being said, if we were to take an overview of Abu al Zarqawi’s overall influence, we come to find that his terror campaign in Iraq, while bloody and seemingly unending, was littered with a host of mediocre tactics, failed attempts, and unimpressive results.


No doubt the jihadist is a brutal opponent. But this brutality is largely only successful in benign theaters of peace –– Beslan, Madrid, Bali, London, etc. –– while far less effective in theaters of war or on the fields (or streets) of battle. Against unarmed and unsuspecting train commuters, businessmen in buildings, and prepubescent schoolchildren on buses, al Qaida operatives seem to have a successful track record. Who going to work, after all, suspects or expects another passenger to vaporize himself and the rest of the bus with him? Where we start to see their strategic idiocy, tactical ineffectiveness, and so-so results, is when men like Abu al Zarqawi –– or Mr. bin Laden or Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri –– take their ragtag minions to war against warriors, not journalists, with guns, not journals.

A creepy jihadist video of an insurgent sniper targeting American soldiers in Iraq recently popped up on Islamist-run websites. The video, filled with background music and Arabic chants –– I thought music was sacrilegious and was to be banned? –– showed unsuspecting U.S. servicemen as the victims of sniper fire from afar. Most of the Americans were simply on their patrol route, walking the beat, waving to locals… one, presumably a Marine, was ordering a soda from an Iraqi on the side of the road when he was suddenly shot.

While watching this, however, what became clear was the unusual trend of the sniper fire not ending up anywhere near the heads or faces of the sniper’s American foe. And this was sniper fire, where a seemingly calm, cool, and collected Muslim militant had all the time in the world, from a far away building, to align, aim, and shoot. But instead, most of the shots ricocheted off the soldiers’ body armor, while his comrades came swooping in to rescue and hurry him off to nearby medics. This sub-par marksmanship is very much indicative not only of most of the foreign jihadists and Sunni insurrectionists, but of the general ineffectiveness, shortage of cohesiveness, and lack of professionalism within the terrorist insurrection itself.

Perhaps it is because our Dark Age adversaries espouse a code of conduct and a way of life that shuns secular rationalism, group consensus, public inquiry and research, and the concepts of innovation and inventiveness, that they rely, like parasites, on Western technology they did not make and cannot adequately handle? Does this explain why the self-ordained Emir was incapable of operating his own machine gun while making a propagandist video? The fact is, militarily, the al Qaidists are laughable not laudable, providing for more humor than horror, as far superior American marksmen mow them down, en masse, with pleasure and relative ease. Abu al Zarqawi may have been the world’s most dangerous man, but to children, not armed men. He may have been a fine neck-hacker –– and may have made a fine lumberjack in another life –– but the all-knowing, omnipresent, ever-fearsome tactician, he was not.


This thesis doesn’t just apply to one now-rotting terrorist. The entire jihadist movement is abjectly horrendous on the battlefield –– tactically, strategically, and certainly historically. As this is written, there have been, sadly, approximately 2,492 fallen Americans in Iraq, resulting in about 2.1 fatalities every twenty-four hours. More than a fifth of those fatalities are from non-hostile related events –– accidents, heatstrokes, friendly fire, wounds, etc. –– which gives the jihadists credit for about 1.6 American deaths per day. More than forty percent of those fatalities are the result of an underground, buried, indiscriminate, and often-unattended IED. An insurgent can plant a roadside IED in January only for it to kill an American in his convey in July. In fact, many of these IED bombs are simply unexploded and from a bygone era; from several decades and several Iraqi wars ago, like the one against Iran or the one to take Kuwait.

So in short, the jihadists themselves –– along with Ba’athist guerrillas and various militias –– kill, directly, less than one American each day (about .96 fatalities per day). That is historically pathetic in every sense (perhaps for nomenclature purposes, we should round up and call this the One KIA-a-Day War?). We are told this grand strategic mistake and miserable and failing war of enormous proportions is going nowhere, and yet those we wage war against perhaps hold the record for killing the least amount of enemy combatants amongst any army, militia, or terrorist organization, in any large-scale insurgency, insurrection, or guerrilla war in human memory. Wait! –– we can’t forget about Afghanistan, where it seems al Qaida has outdone itself in war-making and war-waging incompetence; where the planners of Sept. 11 have inflicted on us a measly one-tenth of the casualties we have experienced in Iraq, even though we’ve been warring in the Afghan theater for a year and a half longer. Bravo, al Qaida.

Add this to the fact that we have some 2.9 million brave men and women in our overall armed forces (1.4 million of which are on active duty). Our current force-levels in Iraq number around 130,000 troops, at one point or another, with others rotating in and out over the years for second and third tours of duty. But while avoiding simplistic relativism and ludicrous comparisons, a statistic I would find interesting would be: Of the approximately 1.3 million active duty U.S. servicemen and women currently not serving in Iraq –– about the same number of soldiers as there are people in cities like Phoenix and San Diego –– how many of them die within every twenty-four hour cycle? Either from natural causes, heart attacks, car accidents while in their hometowns on leave, or a backfiring gun while on their bases in the States –– how many, of the 1.3 million, die every day? Is it more than one? Is it more than two? Certainly more than two people die on Monday and at least another two on Tuesday in the city of Phoenix, no? Could this census standard be applied to a decentralized population, like the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, stationed everywhere from South Korea, to the Balkans, to Germany, to New Jersey?

These statistics are imperfect and would be difficult to verify. But the point is, while not conclusive, this sole probability underscores an important fact: terrorists are deadly in civilian cities and impotent on the battlefield. Is it possible that we sophisticated Westerners sit here in our leisure and beef up the tactical brilliance of a tactical dimwit like Abu Musab al Zarqawi –– while our all-volunteer military loses more souls outside of war, in peace and from other causes, than in Iraq from his violence?


One of the weirder developments regarding the recent good news has been how critics of the war effort have responded to it. Whereas our inability to find a bin Laden or, until now, an al Zarqawi, was shown to be proof of our failings, we are now immediately reminded that terrorism continues post-whomever, and jihadist insurrections are capable of surviving without their leader. If we do not kill him, his mystique rises. If we do kill him, he becomes a martyr. All of the talking points are apparently already covered just in case something good happens abroad.

Columnists and anchorwomen, without a moment to reflect the magnitude of Abu al Zarqawi’s demise, have already quipped about bin Laden’s continuous at large status, even though he does not reside in the Iraqi war theater whatsoever. We are reminded of that by opponents of the war as reason for why we shouldn’t have gone in –– “Taking our eye off the ball,” etc. –– but are somehow expected to expand on a good event in Iraq with a likewise good event on the Afghan-Pakistani border (in hours, no less). In addition, “regional experts” are already throwing out the names of future successors and heirs –– in a very strange, almost giddy, fantasy football-type way –– of who could best replace al Zarqawi’s brutality. A top associate Abbas al Mufraji has already been detained due to intelligence picked up during recent raids. But the name everyone seems to be throwing out is of an Egyptian that goes by Abu Ayyub al Masri, a top al Qaidist. Before we’re expected to catch him, perhaps we could find out what he looks like first? But in due time, he too will be rounded up or obliterated from the sky, along with the litany of other top al Qaida hierarchs which we have been hunting both before and after the crater in lower Manhattan.

Muhammad Atef, one of the original three cofounders of al Qaida, was killed in 2001 by a U.S. airstrike. Abu Zubaydah was caught; his interrogation leading to an orgy of raids and subseqent captures, including the arrest of Omar al Faruq (some twisting of the arm and the big man sung like a canary). A captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed –– operational planner of Sept. 11 and third in command –– looked like he had just gone six rounds with Mike Tyson circa 1986. His replacement, Abu Faraj al Libbi, looked like he had gone the distance (quite possibly the ugliest man alive). Abu Abbas, who used to throw old men in wheelchairs overboard cruise ships, was found in Baghdad.

The top dog in North Africa, Abu Anas al Liby, was found in Khartoum, while al Qaida’s chief in East Africa and so-called naval expert (and the main culprit of the USS Cole attack) Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, was rounded up in 2002. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is out of the picture. Ramzi Binalshibh, interloper with the Sept. 11 hijackers, is behind bars. Ali Qaed Senyan al Harthi was assassinated in Yemen by an unmanned Predator drone hovering above. Hambali is out of business in Southeast Asia, as is most of his al Qaida-linked network. After stuffing Paul Johnson’s head in a freezer, Saudi police killed Abdel Aziz al Muqrin, resulting in a Zarqawi-like death mug shot –– head back, cheeks bloodied, eyes closed, mouth shut, once ferocious, now motionless.

Nor can we forget the beauty of a charred and embalmed Uday and Qusay, or the dental examination, televised for the world, of an unshaven and beleaguered Saddam –– who later, as an inmate, writes poetry and waters plants in his underwear, complaining about the Bush family and demanding his captors serve him more Fruit Loops for breakfast. His almighty regime crushed in weeks, his former associates now reduced to bickering old men awaiting their hanging.


Most somewhat-in-the-know Americans could tell you a Hussein is on trial and a bin Laden at large, but seem to overlook the second-tier of internationally wanted murderers, most of which are no longer a problem. As debates about Gitmo and faux stories of flushed Qur’ans go on, we overlook that these men with tricky names, relatively unknown to the average person, have been dealt with unapologetically and righteously. Rather we fret over the drip-drip nonstop American, Iraqi, and Afghan casualties… and assume it is all going to hell in a hand basket.

Even more discouraging would be the lack of emphasis on stories of once concrete and now abstract things like heroism. Rarely do we see a CNN special of the American soldier, embedded with an Iraqi battalion, who dives on a grenade to prevent the loss of his Iraqi subordinates, nor do we hear of Halliburton’s role in bringing in foreign direct investment, or of Europeans forgiving Iraqi foreign debt due to American strong-arming, or of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi bodies unearthed in mass graves. Built schools and hospitals are brushed off as administration talking points, instead of big, important structures erected through the sweat of the so-called occupiers.

For once, rather than turn our attention away from Abu al Zarqawi’s death onto Osama bin Laden’s not-dead status, perhaps we could delve deeper into Iraqi society and learn about another, far different, Osama? Several months ago in an article titled Blowback Schmoback, I wrote of Osama al Jadaan, a Sunni sheikh and tribal leader in the restless Anbar province in western Iraq. Mr. al Jadaan was the principle elder of the Sunni Karabila tribe, which resided in the insurgent hotbed province.

Not a fan of the U.S., per se, he was the epitome of what the administration has recently begun referring to as a “rejectionist,” or someone who may not bask in glee over the fact Americans are in his country, but nevertheless will, over time, join the democratic experiment as more sovereignty and responsibility is transferred over to elected Iraqi officials. At the beginning of the year, Osama’s clan made a deal with the Iraqi government and U.S. military to enlist his quasi-militia to hunt down foreign fighters –– specifically al Zarqawi’s followers –– and drive al Qaida out of the Anbar region.

“Under my leadership and that of our brothers in other tribes, we are getting close to the shelter of this terrorist,” spoke al Jadaan, predicting, “We will capture him soon.” Just after that prediction, Mr. al Jadaan, and his driver, were gunned down in his car by al Qaidists loyal to Mr. al Zarqawi. Twelve days later, to the joy of Iraqis, this Iraqi hero’s prediction came to fruition in the form of one 500-pound laser-guided GBU-12 and one 500-pound GPS-guided GBU-38.

 

[jimnyc]

Am I insane? The more I watch and read about the likes of Zarqawi and the other scum that are involved in the beheadings, I almost get the urge to grab a samurai myself and cut a terrorists head off. Damn, I just get so damn pissed thinking of these videos and seeing these cocky scumbags, then they hide in a stinkin cave somewhere. I'm proud knowing our soldiers are over there slowly hunting down these animals and hopefully executing them.