James Jay Carafano:
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... Vinny took the attack on his city personally. He wanted to help fight back. Though Vinny no longer wore a uniform, he turned to his alma mater, helping found and fund the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
The center combats terrorist threats to the U.S. through education, research and policy analyses. Center staff work with cadets, as well as the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. They produce some of the world's best work on transnational terrorism.
The center's latest product, "Self-Inflicted Wounds: Debates and divisions with al Qa'ida and its periphery," is a must read. No better "state of the enemy" assessment exists. It concludes that the Islamist terrorist movement has not weathered the global war well.
External pressures and internal divisions have taken their toll. "Self-Inflicted wounds" describes the jihadi movement, helmed by al Qaeda, as "one that lacks coherence and unity, despite its claims to the contrary."
Bin Laden's organization has suffered reversals on virtually every front and shows "clear signs of decline." The Taliban lost its state. Islamists who rebelled against the Saudi regime were driven into the remote deserts of Yemen. Israel still stands. And the U.S. remains a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East.
One of al Qaeda's greatest strategic errors, the report says, was its willingness to sanction the killing of Muslims by Muslims. Most of the innocents killed in the Long War were slaughtered by "holy" warriors.
Such attacks, the report concludes, "delegitimize the group in the eyes of the Umma--the global Islamic community of believers and al-Qa'ida's hoped-for constituency."
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The mass murder for Allah attacks have backfired on the Islamic religious bigots., but I think the most important thing is the fact that we have taken the war to them and they no longer feel like they can attack with impunity. We continue to thwart more and more of their attacks. At some point more of their followers are going to start believing their cause is hopeless. When that happens we will be close to victory.
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