So they aren’t more dangerous to us than al Qaeda after all? Why would they have said that?
by digby
Ok, wait a minute. The last I heard ISIS was so uniquely evil that they were even worse than al-Qaeda. In fact, they were so bad that al-Qaeda kicked them out of the gang because of their brutality.
While the Islamic State group is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.
At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.
But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.
In addition, according to classified U.S. intelligence assessments, the Khorasan militants have been working with bomb-makers from al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate to test new ways to slip explosives past airport security. The fear is that the Khorasan militants will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.
The Obama administration has said that the Islamic State group, the target of more than 150 U.S. airstrikes in recent weeks, does not pose an imminent threat to the continental U.S. The Khorasan group, which has not been subject to American military action, is considered the more immediate threat.
So al Qaeda is actually the group that we must keep from killing us all in our beds, not ISIS? Just like we’ve been keeping them from killing us in our beds for 13 years?
Huh …
I’m being facetious and it’s probably inappropriate. But many of us have been pointing out for months the reason Al Qaeda split with ISIS was because it was being too brutal to fellow Muslims when al Qaeda’s mission was to take on the Great Satan — just as it has been for a decade and a half. In other words, little had changed for Americans in the threat department. Al Qaeda still wants to kill us but we’ve been pretty successful at keeping them from doing that. For some reason we needed a new boogeyman. I wonder why?
We’ve spent trillions on Homeland Security, outfitted every Barney Fife in the nation with robo-cop gear and allowed the government to spy on Americans at will. I don’t know about you but I kind of expect that all of that should actually be worth something. If we’re going to run around tearing our hair out every time somebody puts out a scary video maybe it’s time to re-evaluate that strategy.
This is not to say that there isn’t a threat for the people in the Middle East and there is a legitimate argument to be made that it requires intervention from outside the region lest the whole place blows up even further. (I’m not sure we won’t make things worse — we usually do — but I understand the arguments for it.) What is galling is the fact that they continue to treat us like children and tell us spooky bedtime stories so they can scare us into supporting their commercial/geopolitical goals. Maybe those goals are worth pursuing but we’ll never know because we’re chasing evil Ninjas who are allegedly coming over the border to unleash mushroom clouds on American cities.
I’m serious. This is what Fox News reporter Todd Starnes said on Hannity last night:
RT @toddstarnes “what will O call it when there’s a mushroom cloud over an American city because terrorists came over the border to attack”
— Liberty Lives Here (@PJimmy18) September 13, 2014
And frankly, I’m almost as disgusted that the American people continue to be thrilled at the prospect of kicking ass over some trumped up threat — and yes, I do believe that a whole lot of us are anxious to get back to the business of ass-kicking. It’s much more exciting than thinking about the wealthy elites stealing more and more of your meager earnings. But it’s a dangerous and nasty way to entertain ourselves out of a nasty malaise.
Al Qaeda has a strategy to create dramatic terrorist attacks on the West. We’ve known this for a long, long time. That has not changed. ISIS is a different problem. The fact that the war hawks pimped this line about ISIS being worse than Al Qaeda should make everyone skeptical of what they are hearing about this whole thing — and skeptical of the motivations behind it. How many times do we have to be lied to?
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