Thursday, January 07, 2010

The Jordanian fiasco

The operation which struck against the CIA is now a major embarrassment for the Jordanian and American intelligence services. Especially since the war in Afghanistan is now going so badly. This is a very, very, big deal, especially with the Obama administration carefully cultivating an image of an al Qaeda on the run. The reality appears to be something completely the opposite. The al Qaeda franchise has spawned some quite ridiculous offshoots which perhaps helped to cultivate this air that somehow the group was being gradually destroyed, but every now and then some completely unexpected and novel attack is carried out apparently out of the blue. This is the hallmark of al Qaeda attacks more than anything else, a signature of sorts. Amidst all the confusion of the so-called "war on terror", this group still seems able to strike America where it hurts. This is all very surreal to watch, like a James Bond film. A shadowy organisation holds the world to ransom with what are almost unthinkable plots whilst the leaders of the world's great nations appear powerless to stop it. Is this all the result of one man's mind, or many?

1 comment:

Nobody said...

It's since years that al Kaida failed to mount any significant attack in the West. For the mess the West is living in and its abundance of soft targets, this is a rather remarkable failure (not that it's a guarantee for anything in the future). Let alone that in the long run the technological progress with its minimization of weapons is plainly favoring such shadowy groups looking after soft targets.

Where the group really hits where it hurts, and not out of the blue and every now and then, but on the constant basis is precisely the Muslim world itself. Hardly a week goes by without another Shia mosque or market destroyed by Al Kaida affiliated groups and their likes. If the war on terror has ever intended to turn Al Kaida into a problem for the very culture that spawned it, then the war on terror was a huge success.