Entries Tagged 'AQ Leadership' ↓

Here’s a paraphrastic translation of the second installment published today.  I promise, it’s worth reading to the climactic end:

As I said yesterday, the testimony and hadith transmissions of a liar are not acceptable in Islamic law or in the religious sciences.  So Zawahiri’s religious pronouncement’s in the Exoneration should be rejected. [Sayyid Imam goes on to quote medieval scholars in support of his position.]

Before I get into Zawahiri’s jurisprudential mistakes, I want to say that this is not merely about the errors of one man on some jurisprudential issues.  It is the attempt to establish a corrupt, wayward school (madhhab) to justify excess in shedding blood.  I will detail how this school was established, examine its fundamentals, and refute them.  This corrupt school has been called by some, “the al-Qaeda concept.”

1.  How was the school of al-Qaeda established for excess in shedding blood?

The school emerged in the early ’90s and grew in the late ’90s when Bin Laden and Khalid Shaykh Muhammad put in motion their desire to kill the largest number of Americans possible.  This led to 9/11, which killed without distinguishing between civilians and military personnel. 

UBL left it to his prominent followers to justify the attacks Islamically, the fruit of which Z put in the Exoneration.

2. The principles of the school of al-Qaeda for excess in shedding blood.

To justify this kind of slaughter of Americans outside and inside their country, they had to ignore some Sharia principles.  This is the “jurisprudence of justification” [ie making Sharia fit your objective, not the other way around], the most important principles of which are:

A) Transforming the fight against America from a personal matter to a matter for the entire Islamic umma.  To do this, UBL depended on two things:  

• Media propaganda to promote the corrupt idea that America is the cause of all the ills afflicting Muslims.  He added the Jews because the Palestinian issue is the most visible among the masses, even though he did nothing for the Palestinians for reasons I will cover in part 3.
• Sharia support.  UBL worked to obtain fatwas and letters of support from many shaykhs in Pakistan and Afghanistan to justify the idea of fighting the U.S.  Z alludes to that in his Exoneration.  UBL obtained these things before 9/11.  When he decided to carry out the bombings of 9/11, he didn’t get a fatwa from anyone, acting as if his actions were supported by the previous fatwas.  He didn’t get the permission of his amir, Mullah Omar, or of his Sharia committee.  He did what he did behind their backs.

B) Mobilize the largest number of supporters for the strike on the U.S.  That is why Z in the Exoneration rejected my argument that Muslims have options other than fighting when they are weak and that there are conditions that prevent jihad.  He and his shaykh UBL want everyone to fight everywhere but they were the first to flee.

C) Legal artifice for avoiding the obligation of seeking the permission of one’s amir and host.  They gave Mullah Omar allegiance as the commander (amir) of the faithful in Afghanistan, where they lived.  Thus, the Sharia requires that they get his permission for jihad.  UBL knows that Omar refused conflict with the U.S. and explicitly prohibited them from doing that.  UBL thus created a legal artifice to get around this–the unlawful innovation called “localization of leadership,” meaning that Omar has jurisdiction over what they do in Afghanistan but not outside of it.  There was a violent argument between UBL and his Sharia council over this before 9/11 and after.  He told them in June 2001 that there was a big operation against the U.S. without giving specifics or locations.  His Sharia committee opposed him, saying he had to get Omar’s approval.  UBL refused and concocted the unlawful innovation of “localization of leadership.”  I’ll refute it later.

D) Eliminate all the Sharia obstacles that prevent the killing of Americans.  Instead, AQ formulated the following criminal principles:

• Fighting the far enemy before the near enemy
• Excommunicating and killing someone on account of their nationality because nationality is proof of loyalty and of adhering to the laws of infidel countries
• Can kill anyone who pays taxes to infidels because he (the taxpayer) is waging war with his money
• Can kill an infidel human shield and thus can kill civilians in infidel countries
• Can kill Muslim human shields and thus kill Muslims who mix with infidels 
• Appealing to the principle of reciprocity in order to widen the scope of indiscriminate killing
• Fighting the U.S. is a defensive jihad; thus, one can travel to the U.S. to kill Americans without the permission of one’s father and other authority figures.
• Visas for Muslims in infidel countries are not guarantees of safe passage, so it is permissible to kill citizens in the country that granted you the visa.  Even if it is a guarantee of safe passage, it can be violated for reasons that I’ll respond to later.  
• A tourist visa for people coming to Muslim countries is not a guarantee of safe passage for them.

E) AQ stopped its critics by adopting defenses against those who criticize its criminal school of thought, including:

•  No one may speak on these matters save Jihadi scholars cloistered in caves and mountains.  This is an unlawful innovation.
• Those who criticize them are discouraging jihad, attacking the mujahids, and harming the umma.
• Those who criticize them are serving the interests of the Zio-American Crusade.  Z said this about my Document even though he acknowledges that I had made the same criticisms in my 1993 book, The Compendium; nay, even before that.

3. Criticism of the principles of the school of al-Qaeda

They say the U.S. and the Jews are the reason for the ills of Muslims.  Most of the Exoneration is designed to convince Muslims of this in order to mobilize them against the U.S.  But the cause of Muslims’ problems is Muslims themselves.  When Muslims lost at Uhud, God blamed the Muslims, not their enemies.

There is a hadith qudsi that says Muslims won’t be ruled by others until they become internally corrupt.  God has put infidels over Muslims to punish Muslims for their sins.

“Who lost Palestine?  Arabs who fought the Ottomans and expelled them from Palestine in WWI and then handed it over to Britain in 1916, who gave it to the Jews with the Balfour promise of 1917.  

Who kills Palestinians today, especially their leaders?  Palestinians who collaborate with Israel.  Their betrayal makes it possible for Israel to kill whomever it wants.  

Who today is building Jewish settlements in the West Bank to consolidate its occupation by Israel?  Palestinian laborers.

Who introduced America to Afghanistan in 2001?  Bin Laden and Zawahiri.

What was the reason the U.S. opened the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba for imprisoning Muslims?  Bin Laden’s stupidity.

Who let America enter Baghdad long ago in 1258?  The Vizier Ibn al-`Alqami.

Who let America enter Baghdad today in 2003?  The traitorous senior Iraqi Army officers.

Who killed the Lebanese for 15 years, from 1975-1990?  The Lebanese.

Who occupied Kuwait and killed its people in 1990?  The people of Iraq, not America or Israel.

Who is killing tens of thousands of Sudanese in Darfur today?  The Sudanese themselves are killing one another, just as the Yemenis are doing.

Regardless of the legitimacy of their presence, the American forces did not kill a single Muslim in Saudi Arabia during their presence there after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.  The number of Muslims whose death and displacement was caused by al-Qaeda over a few years in Kenya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, and elsewhere greatly surpasses the number of Muslims killed by or displaced by Israel in Palestine for the last sixty years.  The declaration that al-Qaeda defends Muslims is a myth.  It kills Muslims and displaces them. 

Putting blame on others while not accepting it yourself, which is what UBL and Z do, is the school of Satan.

If Muslims are the core of the problem, then reforming Muslims from within is the solution.  Zawahiri knows I have tried to do this with the Islamic groups and that I criticized them in the Compendium.  I tried to reform them without success.  They continued to cling to erroneous positions with no Sharia proof, only fiery rhetoric.

The Sharia excesses of Z and UBL reached such a point that one of the mujahid brothers excommunicated them in a meeting in 1992.  He was Dr. Ahmad al-Jaza’iri, one of the students of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. 

Document (Arabic): 11-19-08-al-masry-al-youm-denudation-part-2

All the usual suspects have said smart things about the Zawahiri statement (pick through them here), so I won’t summarize his message.  But I do disagree with two things I read.  First is ZS Justus’s statement that too much is being made of Zawahiri’s “house negro” epithet against Obama at the expense of his more significant statements about Afghanistan.  Second is Abu Muqawama’s claim that Zawahiri’s racial epithet won’t be effective.  

Here’s my take: Zawahiri strongly believes that African-American Muslims are disaffected and thus receptive to al-Qaeda propaganda in ways that other American Muslims are not.  (One suspects that Adam Gadahn convinced him of this.)  That is why he spent the better part of an hour-long interview last year talking about Malcolm X and the oppression of blacks in the U.S.  And that is why he is bringing it up again now and using such charged language.  According to a Pew poll last year, this was not a bad communication strategy in 2007.  But given Obama’s election and his overwhelming support among African-Americans, Zawahiri has grossly overreached this time.  Thus, contra Justus, this is the most important part of Zawahiri’s message because, contra AM, it will have a very negative effect on the sole group he had any hope of influencing in the U.S.  It is also bad PR at a time when Zawahiri’s reputation is taking a beating at the hands of his former ally, Sayyid Imam.

One final point: Not all Arab Jihadis like the racially-charged responses to Obama’s election.

Al-Masry al-Youm has begun its serial publication of Sayyid Imam’s new book, The Denudation of the Exoneration.  Since Media Shack won’t be covering it in depth, I’ll be posting summaries of it here as it comes out.  I’ll also .pdf the webpage so readers of Arabic won’t have to go scratching around for it later.

The first installment begins with “The Lies of Zawahiri,” so you know it’s going to be good.  Highlights are the revelation that Zawahiri was a Sudanese agent in the early ’90s and Sayyid Imam’s call to a mubahala.  As you’ll see, it’s hard not to believe that Sayyid Imam relishes the chance he’s been given to put his finger in Zawahiri’s eye.  Here is a summary:

• Zawahiri repeatedly says I wrote the Document [the Tarshid] under the supervision of the U.S. and the Jews.  He is a liar and I call him to a mubahala.  I swear to God that I wrote the Document to help Islam and if Zawahiri has lied about this, may God curse him.
• What Zawahiri says about the Document he also said about Bin Laden.  Zawahiri accused UBL of being an agent of Saudi intelligence working among the Islamic movements when UBL didn’t support them with money in 1995.  Zawahiri thinks everyone is a traitor like him.
• Zawahiri accused me of being an agent of Sudanese intelligence.  I swear that I heard Zawahiri say to me in Sudan at the end of 1993 that he had to carry out 10 operations for the Sudanese in Egypt and that he received $100,000 from them to that end.  If he denies it, I call him to a second mubahala: I swear Zawahiri said this and if he denies it, may God send his curse down upon him.
• He began working for the Sudanese a year after I cut off my ties with Islamic Jihad.  He paid the Islamic Jihad group in Egypt to carry out operations there.  I sat with them and warned them that it was futile and not required by Islamic law, but Zawahiri persisted.  He and his brother swore they would go fight in Egypt until they died, but they did not; they let others die there instead.
• Zawahiri told me in 1991 that my relationship with him gave the Islamic Jihad group more stature in the eyes of the Islamic Group because I am a scholar on par with `Umar `Abd al-Rahman [the Blind Shaykh].  In 1994, when I was making final revisions to The Compendium [al-Jami`, Sayyid Imam's famous reference book on all things jihad], Zawahiri said the book is “a victory from God.”  When they announced the publication of the book in their journal, al-Mujahidun, they said that I am “the mufti of the mujihads in the world” and that I am “the fighting scholar and the mujahid mufti.”
• Zawahiri contradicts himself in his Exoneration.  He says I wrote the Document under U.S. direction, but elsewhere he says I had opposed Islamic Jihad’s struggle in Egypt for 14 years.  He also knows that in The Comendium I criticized attacking a country when it gives you a visa–this was in a book he called a “victory from God.” [Zawahiri hammered Imam on the visa issue in the Exoneration.]
• I did not write The Compendium in 1993 under duress.  When Pakistan exiled me in 1993, I could have gone into political asylum in Europe, but I didn’t.  I chose to remain among Muslims despite the risk.
• Zawahiri also lied when he said I gave the full name of one of the operatives in the two assassination attempts in Egypt and says I could have only know this from an intelligence service.  Therefore, he says, I was working with the intel services when writing my book.  But intel services aren’t always accurate because brothers lie in interrogation, with Zawahiri first among them.  I found that when I was arrested by Egypt in 2004, Zawahiri had attributed many false things to me in his interrogation of 1981 to secure his release.
• Zawahiri says I was being supported by the Yemeni authorities who arrested me and gave me to Egypt at America’s instructions for the purpose of writing the Document.  That is a lie.  I had no connection with the Yemenis.  They arrested me after 9/11 for their own interest and to settle scores with Egypt.  I wasn’t the only one they arrested for these reasons.  The head of Yemeni intel told me that they had given my name to the U.S. and that the U.S. wasn’t interested in me.
• Later, the same intel director said at the beginning of 2002 that I should gather my Egyptian brothers and form an external opposition party against Egypt.  I refused.  They held us for 2 1/2 years until the Yemeni speaker of parliament disparaged us in 2003, so the Yemeni authorities transferred us to Egypt in 2004.  We were transferred as a group, so others in the group can testify to the truth of what I say.
• Zawahiri lies when he says that the Document serves the interests of the U.S.  It is he and UBL that serve its interests.
• Zawahiri lies when he says that he and al-Qaeda are the symbol of popular resistance against the Zio-American campaign against Muslims.  They were the first to flee the U.S. in Afghanistan.  They offered a truce to America; how can this be when they reject everything except fighting?  Moreover, Zawahiri worked as an agent for Sudanese intel to settle its political scores with Egypt in 1993.  The first time Zawahiri met with `Ali `Uthman Muhammad Taha, he told him that he had 10,000 trained fighters in Egypt when he had a few dozen.  There are people in prison with us now who still believe this lie.
• When the first assassination attempt against Sidqi failed in 1993, the Egyptian state infiltrated the Islamic Jihad and operations halted.  As the six men involved in the operation were led to the execution chamber, Zawahiri was busy telling jokes to the Sudanese, who grew frustrated with his lack of seriousness.
• Zawahiri says they decided to carry out operations in Egypt so that the idea and flame of jihad remained alive.  That’s a lie; he did it for fame.  He did it at the bidding of the Sudanese.
• In 1992, when they asked my advice about the operations in Egypt [which had yet to transpire], I refused them.  Zawahiri said, people are condemning us because the Islamic Group is doing something and we are doing nothing.
• At the end of 1993, when I repudiated what they had done in Egypt, he said, “The youth pressured me (to do it).”  I said, “That’s no excuse.”  That’s when he told me about the Sudanese paying for the operations.
• Some people pay money to increase their fame.  Zawahiri pays with the blood of others.
• In Islam, the hadiths transmitted by a liar or the testimony of a liar in court is invalid.  Why would anyone listen to the religious pronouncements of this known liar?
• Is someone who makes decisions for the sake of “the idea and the flame” capable, militarily or in terms of Sharia law, to talk about jihad?

Document (Arabic): 11-18-08-al-masry-al-youm-denudation-part-1

The Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri al-Youm, announced last week that Sayyid Imam will publish a rebuttal of Zawahiri’s Tabri’a (Exoneration), which itself was a rebuttal of Sayyid Imam’s Tarshid–a text that caused a great stir last year because the author criticized his former colleague, Zawahiri, for being an unrealistic revolutionary.  Since Rob at Media Shack is probably going to cover the book’s serial publication (the release begins this Tuesday), I’ll focus on Jihadi reaction to the text as it is released.  (Incidentally, Imam’s new book is entitled, Denudation of the Exoneration.)  

Today we have a prebuttal of the work posted to the Shumukh forum, followed by comments.  The author of the prebuttal, Ayman, employs several lines of attack:

• Sayyid Imam’s earlier books were too extreme in their formulation of laws for jihad.
• He is a flip-flopper.  Why should we trust what a flip-flopper says?
• If he really understands Islam, why does he need to write “revisions?”

Another Shumukh member, Abu `Abd al-`Aziz al-Yamani, does not like Ayman’s reasoning because it means that Sayyid Imam is sincere in his revisions and is not being coerced, the latter being the standard line of attack on Imam’s book.  Others agree, prompting Ayman to shoot back: “Dr. Hani al-Siba`i communicated with the son of Sayyid Imam, who said, ‘We visited my father in prison and everything that he wrote regarding these revisions he did of his own free will.”

Trying for a little nuance, Muslim lil-Abad quotes Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s thoughts on Imam’s Tarshid.  Part of it, Maqdisi says, is commensurate with things he had said in his earlier works; part of it was obviously inserted by the Egyptian government because no student of Islam would ever say such things; and part of it represents his true hostility toward al-Qaeda. 

Document (Arabic): 11-17-08-shamikh-debate-over-status-of-sayyid-imam-revisions

According to a Pakistani newspaper, Bin Laden is writing a book-length defense of al-Qaeda in response to “negative propaganda and insufficient information” about the organization, an indication that recent IO and strategic communication efforts are getting under his skin.

In the book, Bin Laden will detail the development of al-Qaeda and explain its reasons for attacking the U.S.  He will also catalogue the atrocities perpetrated by the West in the Muslim world and argue that the West’s rise to power began with the Crusades and culminated in U.S. control of oil in Muslim states.  Finally, Bin Laden will blame the U.S. for the current global economic crisis.

Bin Laden’s research assistant, “a young man with a Middle Eastern background,” will translate the Arabic book into English. (Hat tip: MS)

Issue 12 of the Tala’i` Khurasan (Vanguards of Khurasan) is out.  Several big names have written pieces, including Atiyyat Allah (we have to learn from our mistakes), Abu al-Walid al-Ansari (how past jihads failed), Abu Yahya al-Libi (fighting to restore the Sharia is the only way forward in Palestine), and Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (the meaning of piety and patience).  It also includes a 9/11 anniversary article on al-Qaeda’s strategic reasons for attacking the U.S., an article on Jihadis released from prison in Afghanistan, and a summary of the most important operations in Afghanistan over the last four months.

This month we also have a new journal published by al-Shabaab, the AQ-linked group in Somalia.  Marisa thinks its publication means Shabab is growing stronger; that may be, but they can’t produce an attractive journal yet.   The name of the journal, Millat Ibrahim (The Religious Community of Abraham), is an allusion to a Qur’anic verse and a book by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi that have to do with shunning lukewarm Muslims.  There’s even a blurb for Maqdisi’s book at the end of the periodical.  Not surprisingly then, some of the content is devoted to exposing the evils of more compromising Somali opposition groups; for example, there’s a chart of differences between the Shabab and the Liberation Party of Somalia.  Also of interest is a biography of slain Shabab leader Adam Ayro.

Document (Arabic): 10-4-08-shamikh-issue-12-of-talae28099i-khurasan-released

Document (Arabic): 10-4-08-faloja-shabab-publishes-new-journal-millat-ibrahim

Zarqawi’s spiritual mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, composed an elegy for his deceased disciple soon after his death.  Although the two fell out over Zarqawi’s brutal tactics in Iraq, Maqdisi still has a soft spot for him.  The elegy, “The Dove Cried and the Swords Wept,” is recited by Maqdisi and has been released online for the first time via the Shumukh forum.

For those of you that don’t know Maqdisi, he rated as the most-cited Jihadi alive in the study I conducted for West Point.

Document (Arabic): 9-20-08-shamikh-abu-muhammad-maqdisi-elegy-for-zarqawi

Continuing…

• Why did al-Qaeda attack the U.S.?  Was it to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East?  Or was it to strike the far enemy for the sake of destroying the near enemy (i.e. regimes in the Arab and Islamic world)?
• Regardless of the intent of al-Qaeda’s leaders, the sequence of events gives weight to the second possibility, which could also be termed the Domino Scenario.
• According to a 2007 article by George Friedman, Bin Laden saw a rare opportunity after the fall of the USSR to begin re-establishing the worldwide caliphate.  But, says Friedman, armed groups can’t establish empires.  They can, however, seize a state and use it to begin to establish an empire.  UBL realized that Afghanistan wasn’t the ideal place for this because of its geographical position and its weakness.
• Based on Zawahiri’s pre-9/11 writings, Friedman believes that UBL wanted to topple local regimes and replace them with Islamic ones.  He was looking to do this in Egypt because it leads the Islamic world.
• Friedman says the two goals of the attacks were 1) to prove to Muslims that the US could be attacked and suffer great harm, and 2) to provoke a U.S. response.  Whatever the U.S. chose to do in response, Muslims would win.  If the U.S. failed to respond, it would look weak.  If it attacked, it would be engaged in a crusade.
• The authors of a report from Decision Supports Systems, Inc. written two months after 9/11 understood al-Qaeda’s intent.  The study says that before 9/11, AQ attacked three targets without sufficiently provoking the US: civil, diplomatic, and military.
• Based on al-Qaeda’s statements before 9/11, DSSI wrote that al-Qaeda was trying to provoke the U.S. into a conflict with it.  After the 9/11 strikes, the U.S. responded in the manner planned by al-Qaeda.
• According to DSSI, AQ wanted to provoke the U.S. into a large military invasion of the Middle East so AQ could destroy its military and upset the geopolitical balance of power.
• The DSSI report argues that the greatest indicator that this was AQ’s strategy is the fact that its operatives assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance.  AQ knew that when the US retaliated for 9/11, it would work through tribal proxies because the U.S. does not like to get its hands dirty.  Thus, AQ had to kill the most effective leader of those trbies.
• As the DSSI study concludes, as long as the U.S. continues to behave in predicable ways, al-Qaeda can anticipate its responses and plan accordingly.
• According to the DSSI study, there are three possibilities after 9/11.  1) The U.S. intervention in the Middle East provokes uncontrolable violence in the Middle East which will make it ungovernable in the long term.  2) The U.S. sends more troops to stabalize the situation but its presence polarizes Muslims and puts strain on its allies in the region, particularly the Gulf states and Pakistan.  The government of Pakistan could become unstable and AQ or its allies could get control of its nukes by infiltrating the security apparatus or overthrowing the government.   The collapse of these states will create security vaccuums that AQ or its allies will fill, giving them control of oil and nukes.  3) AQ could choose to destroy oil production in the MIddle East, forcing the U.S. to look elsewhere to meet its energy needs.

[Update: All of DSSI's publications can be found here.]

Major Jihadi forums have been down for almost a week now, which ruined al-Qaeda’s release of its 9/11 anniversary video.  The video is now out, but those who prepared it for distribution included the wrong password and it probably won’t be until tomorrow that the problem is corrected.  Even when it finally sees the light of day, viewing it will be very anticlimactic.

My hat off to whomever succeeded in removing Ekhlaas, et al.   The usual suspects (the good Doctor and the Haganaut) have denied involvement and I believe them.  Still, whoever did it knew what they were doing, beyond technical proficiency–they targeted the right forums at the right time.  As a gauge of the attack’s effectiveness, look at how many days it’s taken to get the message out and how clumsily it’s been distributed.   If these attacks continue, al-Qaeda will have to find other means of distribution or stop telegraphing its intentions with banner ads.

Continuing…

• It is no accident that the World Trade Center was the main object of the 9/11 attacks since it was the symbol of U.S. economic hegemony. Bear in mind that the attacks had been planned in the ’90s during the height of U.S. economic power.
• The strikes were meant to polarize Muslims as well as the enemy’s population. They were also intended to push the U.S. into overreacting and committing errors.
• Why didn’t all four strikes on 9/11 hit the Pentagon alone? Why did al-Qaeda attack civilians and the WTC? We need a new strategic framework to understand its reasoning. Three things needs to be considered.
• First, when the U.S. attacks a country, it abides by the principle of the ends justify the means. This is one of the foundational principles of American pragmatism. Studies that came out after 9/11 really brought this mindset to the fore. But, according to a principle of international relations, it is the right of oppressed people to respond in kind. Al-Qaeda decided that there was no difference between civilian and soldier among the enemy, especially since is a democracy. Since U.S. citizens vote, they are responsible for U.S. policies and thus subject to terrorism. This was the first strategic breakthrough of AQ.
• Second, although the U.S. is militarily superior to everyone else, it sometimes uses asymmetrical warfare against its enemies. In response, AQ decided to make use of it as well. Asymmetrical warfare is part of guerrilla warfare and AQ added terrorism to its asymmetrical toolkit.
• Third, the U.S. began promoting fourth generation warfare in ‘89 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Fourth generation warfare means that there is no longer a battlefield; rather, the society of the enemy is the theater of conflict. 4GW puts emphasis on small, flexible forces. The goal is to destroy the enemy from within and the list of targets iss expanded to include the enemy’s culture and popular support for the war.
• For fourth generation warfare to succeed, it is necessary to correctly identify the enemy’s strategic center of gravity. In this type of warfare, there is no delineation between war and peace and no clear battlefields. In these circumstances, differences between civilian and soldier are erased.
• The idea of the center of gravity has changed the conceptual framework of warfare. In any war, you identify the enemy and identify the point on which you’ll concentrate all your effort to achieve victory with the least amount of effort and losses. This point is called the center of gravity.
• In traditional warfare, the center of gravity was the opposing army. If a country lost its military strength, it was unable to continue fighting and consequently lost the war. But the development of weapons and the growing complexity of the means of control in modern societies means that the center of gravity is now more flexible and elusive. It’s not just material power. The U.S. won all its battles in Vietnam but lost the war because public opinion turned against the war. “In other words, America lost the political will to pay the costs of the war and did not consider the hypothetical return on investment commensurate with the expected loses.”
• The center of gravity is certainly not the enemy’s point of weakness such that a strike at it will end everything. Clausewitz, who invented the term “center of gravity,” had difficulty defining it, as do contemporary American military theorists. The meaning slides between an enemy’s point of weakness or its point of strength. In Clausewitz’s work, it is evident that the concept is not confined to a place, a potentiality, or a fixed source of power. Rather, it is the point of equilibrium from which the enemy derives the potentialities of power and the will to fight.
• Identifying the enemy’s correct center of gravity is half the battle according to the American colonel, Antulio Echevarria. He believes that the center of gravity in Clausewitz’s original text is judged according to its impact on the whole, not according to its potentialities and capabilities. In other words, it is the specific point that, if struck sufficiently, will have a decisive impact on the whole body. On this basis, Echevarria suggests redefining the term as focal points which inhere to the combatant’s complete structural order and which bring it strength from several sources and give it purpose and direction. [To quote directly from Echevarria: "A center of gravity is the one element within a combatant’s entire structure or system that has the necessary centripetal force to hold that structure together."] He also believes that an enemy’s center of gravity should be continually reassessed due to its temporary and transitory nature.
• In total wars, the strategic center of gravity is a combatant’s economic-industrial potential.  In limited wars, it is the military-security potential.  National leaders are not centers of gravity because they themselves do no have the potential to defeat the enemy.  They are only catalysts.
• Now to return to the strikes on the U.S. center of gravity.  Firstly, the center of gravity for the U.S. during WWII was its industrial complex.
• Secondly, In the past two decades, U.S. financial centers seemed to be its center of gravity.  They absorbed the liquidity of the world and its interest.
• Thirdly, the U.S.’s primary means of attracting funds is its capacity to impose its will through force on other countries and its belief that it can’t be defeated because of its geographical and geopolitical protection (it’s surrounded by oceans) and its military dominance.
• Fourthly, hitting the U.S. homeland, despite all the strengths we mentioned, demonstrated the country’s brittleness, which gave reassurance to the U.S.’s enemies, especially in the Islamic world.
• Fifthly, the strike on the WTC was not enough to destroy the world’s confidence in the U.S., even though it shook one of the pillars of its control of the world.
• Does all of this mean that AQ committed the mistake of Japan in WWII, creating its own Peal Harbor?  In other words, did it provoke the giant without finishing it off and now it must bear the consequences?
• There is a difference in both cases.  Japan was a small, isolated, maritime nation that had no resources or raw materials.  Since Japan fought a traditional war, its defeat was certain given that it could not match or destroy the U.S.’s center of gravity [its industrial base].  AQ, on the other hand, stretches over continents and its resources are from the umma; these resources have been barely affected.  AQ’s mode of fighting is new and not one to which the U.S. is accustomed.