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2 Al-Qaeda's American-style
message By Michael Scheuer
As the 19th anniversary of al-Qaeda's
founding nears, Western analysts have accumulated
an enormous body of primary-source material on
which to base judgments, assessments and
predictions. While it is a truism to say that
al-Qaeda is a "learning organization" - in the
sense that it studies failed operations and adapts
- it is not often enough remembered that al-Qaeda
is also an organization that devotes large amounts
of time and resources
to
teaching, informing and warning.
Much of
this latter activity is directed to the Muslim
world, but not since the Americans confronted Ho
Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap during the
Vietnam conflict have they had a foe as eager as
al-Qaeda to educate them about its motivations,
war aims and intentions.
Indeed, al-Qaeda
has taken the passion of the North Vietnamese to
inform and warn a step further by recruiting a US
citizen to serve as an English-speaking, Islamist
mentor for the US audience. Adam Gadahn - now
known as Azzam al-Amriki (Azzam the American) -
has emerged as the third-most-important spokesman
among al-Qaeda leaders, after Osama bin Laden and
Ayman al-Zawahiri. [1]
While officially
only a member of al-Qaeda's media committee,
Gadahn is the only al-Qaeda member other than bin
Laden who has devoted entire statements to
directly addressing the president and citizens of
the United States. To be sure, Zawahiri has
ridiculed President George W Bush and talked to
Americans, urging conversion and warning of coming
attacks, but for the most part these statements
have been in the context of regional issues - such
as Iraq - for which he is the group's lead
spokesman.
Gadahn, therefore, is at the
core of al-Qaeda's most important US-oriented
communication projects - although this does not
necessarily mean he is fully involved in military
operations - and seems to serve as the speaker
responsible for ensuring that there is no way
Americans can misunderstand what bin Laden is
talking about. Speaking in the idiom of American
English, and often using contemporary slang,
Gadahn is the sledge that drives home the spike of
bin Laden's messages for Americans.
In
this role, Gadahn's May 29 videotape "Legitimate
Demands" constitutes a rare and perhaps singular
item in the immense corpus of al-Qaeda's
statements, interviews, essays, sermons and
editorials. [2] At the most basic level, it
completes what appears to have been Gadahn's
assignment to amplify bin Laden's effort to
satisfy his post-September 11, 2001, critics by
ensuring that Americans were - according to the
Prophet Mohammed's guidance - offered the chance
to convert to Islam and warned about coming
attacks well before they occurred.
Bin
Laden both offered conversion and warned Americans
multiple times between spring 2002 and summer
2006, and Gadahn focused on clarifying bin Laden's
conversion offer in a lengthy video last September
called "An Invitation to Islam". [3] Gadahn's
words in the conversion video were shorn of most
of the Koranic references common to bin Laden's
rhetoric and were spoken in the American
vernacular.
Gadahn's May 29 "Legitimate
Demands" amplifies and clarifies bin Laden's
multiple warnings to the American people about
future attacks. [4] It is unique in the al-Qaeda
archive in its almost complete lack of Islamic
terminology and allusions, as well as in its
frank, almost brutal directness. In the video,
Gadahn not only re-emphasizes the threats bin
Laden already has made, but in essence says time
is up for Americans to consider his boss's words
and implicitly warns that an attack in the United
States is near.
Gadahn first deftly turns
the idiomatic phrasing of some US leaders'
rhetoric back on them, describing Washington's
actions in Iraq and Afghanistan as "your empire of
evil", and asserting that al-Qaeda is not calling
"for negotiations. We don't negotiate with
baby-killers and war criminals like you! No, these
are legitimate demands that must be met" - a clear
play on the White House spokesperson's 2005
response to bin Laden's truce offer: "We don't
negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of
business."
Gadahn then denounces the
"futile, farcical maneuvers [on Iraq] on Capitol
Hill", adding, "You may or may not be aware of it,
but today ... things aren't going to well for your
crusader coalition [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. In
fact, things are going really badly ... In other
words, you're losing on all fronts and losing
big-time." [5]
The core of Gadhan's
presentation is focused on bin Laden's traditional
positions, but his words are posed in a manner
that adds up to the most maximalist set of demands
al-Qaeda has ever issued regarding what the US
president and Americans must do to avoid being
attacked again domestically.
Bin Laden's
use of implication, ambiguity and a patient,
in-sorrow-not-anger tone is gone. In their place,
Gadahn substitutes - and we must assume with the
consent of bin Laden and Zawahiri - implacable
demands that al-Qaeda knows cannot and will not be
met, and which are reminiscent of those presented
to Serbia by
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