Despite Obama’s claim that we have al Qaeda on the run, attacks by al Qaeda and other global jihadis have taken a sharp swing upwards says Sebastian Gorka in a recent article and interview. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, the US policy of focusing or organizations and individuals as opposed to the ideology of jihad has empowered our enemies.
Dr. Gorka, the Major General Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University, and National Security editor with Breitbart.com, has just published a piece at The Journal of International Security Affairs in an effort to explain “Why Al-Qaeda Just Won’t Die,” and in the piece the evidence points to a resurgent global Jihad movement, not one being rolled back.
Gorka’s points to the fact that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, America’s highest intelligence officer told Congress that al Qaeda now has a base of operations in 12 nations across the world.
In a recent interview with radio host John Batchelor, Gorka pointed out the main misconception that the west has in this war against global jihad. It isn’t “just” al Qaeda, it isn’t single leaders like bin Laden that we are fight ing. It is, rather, an entrenched ideology.
“This isn’t about individuals nor is it about specific organizations. And this is the greatest failing–in fact the fallacy of the current administration’s analysis and strategic response. It’s not about a given group, it’s not about what they call Al Qaeda Senior Leadership or just hunting down Ayman al Zawahiri. If you kill bin Laden, if you kill Zawahiri, that is utterly irrelevant because the enemy is the narrative, the ideology that drives these individuals, thats what makes Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi so successful in recruiting fighters to capture most of Iraq.”
Gorka went on to explain why particular leaders or groups mean nothing by themselves in the long but why it is the ideas that matter more.
To sum up his argument, Gorka concluded by saying, “We have to address the ideological center of gravity of the enemy and the bottom line is that the permanent solution to the Jihadi threat will not be a kinetic one (i.e. battles and boots on the ground firefights), because you cannot kill you r way out of this problem. Killing terrorists is great, but that will not provide the ultimate solution. You have to destroy the ideology that mobilizes them.”
This “misdiagnosis” of our enemy has allowed global Jihad to steal a march on us and grow, not shrink.
The president’s claims that he has put a dent in al Qaeda is simply wrong and we are fooling ourselves if we believe it.
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