reprint of "The Secret Assault on Terrorism" from 2010

The Secret Assault on Terrorism

About 50 people have been reading this article lately, likely because it describes a lot about how and why 40 Al Qaeda operatives were killed in Yemen and died in the last 2 or 3 days. This article was written originally in 2010

The button above likely is is the best to click on or I will try to quote it below. but sometimes when I do this the columns get skinny because of Blogger.com's html for some reprints.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Secret Assault on Terrorism

I was wandering around the New York Times online and found a very interesting article:

Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

to read this article click on "Two Continents" above.

It talks about how public wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan cause more problems than solutions as far as publicity worldwide goes. So, there is a new attempt to use the CIA and soldiers in clandestine operations with the secret agreement of local governments and drones and hellfire missiles are now used on two continents, Asia (including middle east as in Yemen) and in Africa specifically in Somalia. It says the main problem with these kinds of operations is that American soldiers used in this way could be treated as spies if captured and this could interfere with them being treated correctly by the Geneva Conventions. It also leads to private armies (mercenaries worldwide) being hired as private contractors to assassinate terrorists anyway they can, and anyway they can manage it.

 

However, dealing with Al Qaeda in Yemen is problematic as evidenced by the following quote from the same New York Times article:

The tribes there tend to regularly switch sides, making it difficult to depend on them for information about Al Qaeda. “My state is anyone who fills my pocket with money,” goes one old tribal motto. end quote. 

The following is a definition for Salafi Jihadism that is mentioned on page 4 of the NY Times article. The definition is from  from Wikipedia:

Salafist jihadism (also Salafi jihadism) is a school of thought of Salafi Muslims who support violent jihad. The term was coined by scholar Gilles Kepel^[1][2] to describe Salafi who began developing an interest in violent jihad during the mid-1990s. Practitioners are often referred to as Salafi jihadis or Salafi jihadists. Journalist Bruce Livesey estimates Salafi jihadists constitute less than 1 percent of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims (c. 10 million). ^[1]

^{end quote from wikipedia on Salafi jihadists.} 

^{If there are presently 10 million adherents worldwide to the concept of violent jihad and some or most of them have kids this jihad terrorism thing is likely to go on for hundreds of years the way things are presently going here on earth.}