Page 2 of 2 Al-Qaeda's American-style
message By Michael Scheuer
the
Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 when Vienna
intended war, not a settlement.
Gadahn's
demands on Washington are nothing less than a
complete US withdrawal from the Muslim world,
warning that a failure to do so "will make you
[Americans] forget all about the horrors of
September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia
Tech". [6] He says that "every last one of your
[America's] soldiers, spies, security advisers,
trainers and attaches and so
on"
must leave the Muslim world "from Afghanistan to
Zanzibar".
If a single individual remains,
he warns, the United States will be attacked. [7]
"Stop all support and aid, military political,
economic and otherwise, to the 56-plus apostate
regimes of the Muslim world and abandon them to
their well-deserved fate at the hands of the
soldiers of Islam," Gadahn demands, explaining
that if Washington does not "comply in full", the
mujahideen will "deem it sufficient to continue to
fight and kill Americans". [8]
On Israel,
Gadahn repeats the pattern: "End all support,
moral, military, economic, political or otherwise,
to the bastard state of Israel. And ban your
citizens, Zionist Jews, Zionist Christians and the
rest, from traveling to occupied Palestine or
settling there. Even one penny of aid will be
considered sufficient justification to continue
the fight." [9]
Gadahn closes by repeating
al-Qaeda's demand that Washington "free all Muslim
captives from your prisons, detention facilities
and concentration camps" and expands the
traditional al-Qaeda demand for US
non-intervention in the Muslim world's affairs by
adding that US officials must "impose a blanket
ban on all broadcasts to our region, especially
those designed to alter or destroy the faith,
minds, morals and values of our people".
This last comment is worth noting because
it goes quite a bit beyond the limited degree of
attention and specificity al-Qaeda generally
accords to the impact of US culture on Muslims.
Gadahn's bare-knuckled and supremely
confident presentation sharpens and clarifies the
message of warning bin Laden has repeatedly
delivered to Americans; it is spoken by an
American, in modern English, and is studded with
contemporary slang and catch-phrases. Gadahn's
words also have a note of finality about them, as
if he is saying there will be no more warnings
from al-Qaeda, and the choice for Americans is
between surrender and domestic attack.
Again, this is out of character for the
rhetoric of bin Laden and Zawahiri, and it
suggests that they ordered Gadahn to make a last
warning to Americans before al-Qaeda attacks
inside the United States. The obvious
unacceptability of the demands also suggests that
al-Qaeda has an attack ready and that nothing
short of a US capitulation will deter it. In
Gadahn's words, "the die has been cast" and an era
has begun that will see "your end, not ours". [10]
Notes
1. The very
best account of Adam Gadahn and the road he
traveled to al-Qaeda is Raffi Khatchadourian,
"Azzam the American: The making of an al-Qaeda
homegrown", The New Yorker, January 22. 2.
"Legitimate Demands: A Message from Mujahid
Brother Adam Yahiye Gadahn (Azzam)", IntelCenter,
May 29. 3. "An Invitation to Islam",
IntelCenter, September 2, 2006. 4. See, for
example, Osama bin Laden, "Message to the American
People", Al-Jazeera, October 30, 2004. Bin Laden's
consistent indictment of the United States has six
components, and they are mirrored in Gadahn's
statement: unqualified US support for Israel; the
US military and civilian presence on the Arabian
Peninsula; the US military presence in Muslim
countries; US exploitation of Muslim energy
resources; US protection for tyrannical Muslim
governments; and US support for Russia, India and
China against Muslims. 5. "Legitimate Demands:
A Message from Mujahid Brother Adam Yahiye Gadahn
(Azzam)". 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8.
Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. It is worth speculating
that Gadahn's words also have a Machiavellian
intent given that they come at a time when the
inspirational and instigating power of Osama bin
Laden's rhetoric is increasingly visible around
the world in the proliferation of Islamist groups
that claim allegiance to bin Laden and his ideas,
but have no command-and-control relationship with
al-Qaeda. For example, last weekend a home-grown,
al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist group intending to
attack John F Kennedy International Airport in New
York was broken up by US law-enforcement
authorities. It may be that Gadahn's final-straw
message reflects al-Qaeda's realization that it
has no control over these home-grown Islamist
groups, and that through throwing down the
gauntlet now, bin Laden's stature as the leader of
the Sunni Islamist movement will grow by analysts
associating his inspiration as a motivating force
when one of the home-grown groups in the US or
elsewhere is finally successful.
Michael Scheuer served as the
chief of the bin Laden unit at the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is
now a senior fellow at The Jamestown
Foundation.
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