U.S., West Need to Fight the ‘Stealth Jihad’, Terrorism Experts Tell Intelligence Panel
By Matt Korade
CQ Staff
As al Qaeda transforms from discrete terrorist network to a franchising organization for frustrated, religious-inspired nationalists, the need to counter Islamist, anti-Western propaganda grows ever more urgent, three terrorism experts told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
And yet it is in “the War of Ideas” in which the U.S. government has performed the poorest, said Robert Grenier, the former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
“It is widely understood that in a contest in which our enemy is more properly understood as a popular movement, countering the enemy’s propaganda and undermining his popular appeal become critical elements in the strategic battle,” Grenier said. “Otherwise, we run the risk of waging a highly competent and effective tactical struggle at the potential cost of strategic defeat.”
While killing or capturing Osama bin Laden no doubt would dispirit al Qaeda, his removal would probably not be fatal because the al Qaeda rallying cry has today become as fluid as rhetoric itself, Grenier said.
Examples abound of nationalistic, terrorist groups taking on the al Qaeda banner, including al Qaeda in the Maghreb and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, agreed Steven Emerson Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. A common theme in their rhetoric is that the West is out to destroy Islam.
Such messages have spread rapidly through Europe, which was late to see the problems associated with the rapid importation of Islamist ideologies through unrestricted immigration, said Peter Bergen, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Attacks from London to Madrid, and numerous foiled attempts, have followed.
(Continued here.)
CQ Staff
As al Qaeda transforms from discrete terrorist network to a franchising organization for frustrated, religious-inspired nationalists, the need to counter Islamist, anti-Western propaganda grows ever more urgent, three terrorism experts told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
And yet it is in “the War of Ideas” in which the U.S. government has performed the poorest, said Robert Grenier, the former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
“It is widely understood that in a contest in which our enemy is more properly understood as a popular movement, countering the enemy’s propaganda and undermining his popular appeal become critical elements in the strategic battle,” Grenier said. “Otherwise, we run the risk of waging a highly competent and effective tactical struggle at the potential cost of strategic defeat.”
While killing or capturing Osama bin Laden no doubt would dispirit al Qaeda, his removal would probably not be fatal because the al Qaeda rallying cry has today become as fluid as rhetoric itself, Grenier said.
Examples abound of nationalistic, terrorist groups taking on the al Qaeda banner, including al Qaeda in the Maghreb and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, agreed Steven Emerson Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. A common theme in their rhetoric is that the West is out to destroy Islam.
Such messages have spread rapidly through Europe, which was late to see the problems associated with the rapid importation of Islamist ideologies through unrestricted immigration, said Peter Bergen, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Attacks from London to Madrid, and numerous foiled attempts, have followed.
(Continued here.)
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