Is al-Qaeda winning?

What does it say about Washington's ''war on terror'' that dozen and a half people with paper cutters forced hundreds of thousands of Western troops into the battlefields of the "greater Middle East" region;

That 100,000 foreign soldiers are bogged down in occupied Afghanistan wondering how many dozens of al-Qaeda operatives have remained, if any;

That the most liberal democracy enacted new controversial illiberal laws and unpatriotic practices under its "Patriot Act";

That one shoe-bomber has forced millions of people to take off their shoes every time they take a flight;

That one underpants-bomber will expose every other traveler in most humiliating of ways;

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This article puts things in to perspective, is Al-Qaeda winning?

That after US loss of deterrence and prestige as well as trillions of dollars of military and other expenditures, al-Qaeda's top leadership remains at large; its bases/cells proliferate globally; that volunteers continue to flock into its ranks and young supporters to its websites… !!! And above all that it continues to terrorize America and Americans.

So much that one gets the impression that America is fighting a world superpower despite the incredible disparities in capacity, numbers and support.

Choose your enemies wisely, the same way you choose you friends wisely.

America Chose an enemy which has no organization at all, and that is why it is so hard defeat. You can't track it down unless you tap every human being on this earth, America has already done that to thousands of American Muslims. What they don't realize is that a Muslim can act like non-Muslim to avoid getting tracked. For example :

While attending flight school in Venice, Florida (see July 6-December 19, 2000), Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi regularly visit a couple of local bars. Most nights, after flying classes, they drink beer at the Outlook.

So how can one really fight an invisible enemy? Which can burst any where, any time.

Sooo really who is winning?

Please share your thoughts.

oozy

i think ignorance combined with disinformation is winning a war of terror...

what we don't know, for sure, causes us the most anxiety which eventually leads to fear

it isn't like we are being ACTIVELY terrorized...it is a vague and uncertain idea that is laid as the foundation of the "war on terror"

you are right to ask "who can fight an invisible enemy" because to me it seems easy to confuse "absence" with "invisible"

sure, there are terrorist incidents from time to time, here and there all over the world, but if it truly as severe as *they* tell us it is, why is it that the majority of media coverage is not actual events but all manner of speculation and what-if's?

i see it as propaganda, for the most part; and it's a damn shame that it is so effective!

:shk:

reply to post by oozyism


Of course they are winning. In the absence of any articulation of what "victory" means, those who wish to continue to fight can claim victory. There is nothing but ideology to defeat and it is impossible to defeat ideology in everyone. You can discredit it to some degree, but it can't be defeated and as we have seen a very small number of people can create an enormous amount of havoc

Hell, I can't even get my cousin to stop liking the New York Jets. How are we supposed to get folks to give up on their god?

It depends on what you call winning...

If the objective was to secure a US presence in the region, than I'd say that happened.

There is another saying: Keep your enemies close

On the other hand , can you ever lose to something so incorporeal , so ill defined , so adaptable to new definitions . It can go on for as long as they want it too . The intent isn't to win or lose the war , but it's continuation.

[edit on 15-1-2010 by Gun Totin Gerbil]

Honestly I think I've stopped believing in Al-queda, but
before the wars started did we even ask what they wanted or why they hate us?

The only reasons I can think of is becuase the US is the biggest supporter of Israel, and we were funding Afghanistan to fight the USSR until the USSR collapsed then we just picked up and left.

It is sickening to think we went to war with 2 countries becuase of the actions of maybe 1000 people at most. But now by going to war and killing many innocent people, their families and children will grow up hating us more than they ever did.

We aren't losing the war or terror, but we definitly aren't winning it either.
The only winners are the people that are profitting from the wars.
The losers are the citizens who lost their lives, peace of life, and freedoms.

Is al-Qaeda winning?

Hmm, that depends on who you believe al-Qaeda is.... If al-Qaeda is really a secretive military scapegoat that the CIA has conjured up,,,,, then,,,, We might be winning ourselves??? If that makes any sense...

[edit on 15-1-2010 by wiredamerican]

reply to post by LadySkadi


Having a presence in a region is not a "war on terror". All thats done is get the folks to hop over the border. It does not solve anything. These folks are smart. They exist and live in impoverished and populated areas, making a direct assault against them impractical and pretty much impossible.

What we have done is no different than when a city decides to "clean up". They go downtown and roust the bums, drug addicts and whores. The bums, drug addicts and whores go to a different part of town and the mayor pats himself on the back touting how he "cleaned up" the city. Meanwhile the folks in the other part of town look out of their window and say "Hey, where did all of these bums, drug addicts and whores come from?"

This whole business is a farce and it will never be over. Our government should simply come out and say that. Tell the American people the truth. Folks will die. We can do a lot to ensure that that number is as small as possible, but folks will die and we need to get used to it because it is not going to stop. Ever

Originally posted by tooo many pills
The only reasons I can think of is becuase the US is the biggest supporter of Israel, and we were funding Afghanistan to fight the USSR until the USSR collapsed then we just picked up and left.

you know, my immediate inner response to the OP's question was, "Israel is winning."

this answer came because of the recent general theme i've been interested in, here at ATS; things like those horrid pictures taken of the violence in Gaza and the ideas surrounding the holocaust of WWII.

ultimately we must ask ourselves what is actually going on and what is rumor?

maybe we are being very cleverly distracted by what MIGHT be going on so that we don't become aware of what is REALLY going on?

these are very clever diversionary tactics.

reply to post by queenannie38


Well good use of diversionary and distracting tactics becuase you just totally blew my mind. Care to elaborate on what is distracting us away from the original diversion?

What is won and what had been lost?

Innocent men, women and children are still either suffering from terrorism and fear, or had died...

How long more the bodies of innocents be piled up? Is victory or defeat worth the loss and hatred by precious human lives from all sides?.....

Sigh...

when are people, uninformed people, gonna wake up to this and quit thinking they have to go along with all this crap when it is them who have the real power to stop this dead in its tracks? our founding fathers saw this coming...

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison

Wel depends. If you consider them doing a small attack and making a video somewhere and having the US military spend millions if not billions building bases and moving troops there to fight them as they just get on a camel and ride off to the next location while the US tries to figure out where did they go. Yes. But if they do it smart and just bomb them with drones and avoid the millitary bases and thousands of troops we win.

reply to post by oozyism


It is truly hard to understand who is the winner here because winning is defined by the objective of the game.

If the objective changes then their is no winner or losers, that is the confusion in regards to this whole discussion. Think about it, the first objective was to capture and destroy all Al-Qaeda leaders, members and camps.

Now the objective is slowly changing, now new objectives are added to old ones, for example creating an Afghan army, Afghan police, implementing Democracy, fighting the resistance groups which are not even linked to Al-Qaeda etc...

These new objective will eventually take over the old objective giving the illusion of victory.

So who really is winning?

Let's get to Al-Qaeda's objectives now. Al-Qaeda's objective was to unify all Muslim nations and to build a khalifa and to get rid of Western influence from Islamic nations. Has these objectives been met? Or has these objectives changed?

These objectives hasn't been met and hasn't changed. The Muslim world are not unified one bit. One thing we have to admit is that more and more Muslims are taking a stance against Western foreign policy, which in long term could be advantageous to the Al-Qaeda objective.

In that sense neither side are really winning and both sides are really wasting lives and resources in a fight which shouldn't exist in the first place.

Humans should stop the blaming game and start being reasonable, forget about the past and focus on the future. All human lives should be valued equally, if they are Christian, Muslim, American or Chinese.

Share your thoughts please, I hold every opinion with value.

oz

How can we possibly win a war on terror fighting a fake Al quaeda. The military have made a total mess of things and when they are killing women and children, it really makes you wonder who are the real terrorists?

We rarely hear about Al Quaeda anymore, rather that it is now the Taliban is our enemy. If that is the case, why do we pay them off? I thought it was policy not to negotiate with terrorists?

Perhaps Afghanistan is more about growing opium to fund CIA black-ops, than the reasons being fed to a docile public!

No, in my opinion, they have no intention of winning the War On Terror because while it rages, there is plenty of money for the drug lords and mercenaries which feed off it at the expense of our kids pointless deaths.

I think the reason Al Quaeda was formed by the CIA was to get soldiers to line up in neat rows and shoot at each other like war was 200 years ago. It ain't gonna happen.

reply to post by tooo many pills


Al Qaeda have said, many times what their desires are. Every terrorist organisation does that. They simply want the Muslim world to be left alone, which is hardly surprising considering the amount of crap the rest of the world has put it through. It was bad luck to have the centre of a world religion on top of the world's largest oil fields, between the spheres of influence of two superpower blocs. That meant that to get to the oil, or to get to their foes, nations had to get through the Muslims first. The Afghanistan wars (with Russia and Britain), Iran (the Shah), Iraq (first gulf war, which was about Kuwaiti slant-drilling into southern Iraqi oil fields, and then the Saudis paid $40bn to have over half a million US troops on holy Muslim land), the setting up of Israel by the UN, etc. etc. all helped to foster the idea (either accurately or not) that the west was messing with Muslims at an alarming fashion. Al Qaeda wants that to stop.

Another interesting issue is that in Islam, all Muslims are viewed as belonging to the same family. They might fight (and kill) among themselves, but when threatened by an external force, Muslims will generally stick together, across national borders. That means there is no such thing as affecting Muslims in one area - affect one, and you've affected the lot.

So yeah, Al Qaeda have made massive gains from the war on terror - people are actually talking about the grievances suffered at the hands of the west. And the US is doing absolutely nothing to win, by not talking to the aggrieved.

Guns and bombs don't stop terrorism, they just perpetuate it. Talking is the only solution. Ideally we'd talk to people before they pick up arms, but if the arms are being used, talking is the only way to get them lowered.

reply to post by davesidious


Of course the nasty black crude that makes every country rabid! I guess it has always been about oil. When it comes to oil there is no talking it out, you take as much as you can and take out as many people as you can while you are doing it.

It is sad we didn't listen to a word they said until the towers fell. We still don't for the most part. I don't know what they hoped to accomplish by prodding the beast. Then again I barely believe they committed the attacks.

Atleast we know when the wars will end, when the oil wells dry up.

I don't know anything about "winning or losing", but, they seem to pop up shooting in the most handy of places....for the U.S.

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

The 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with the failed bomb attempt, Abdulmutallab, reportedly has been talking, claiming he was sent on his mission by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. This has conveniently turned the world’s attention on Yemen as a new center of the alleged Al Qaeda terror organization.

The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that "closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean." [9]


Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el-Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.


An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk.


It would also be in a position to threaten China’s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China’s national energy needs.

You mentioned oil???

Cuhail