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July 09, 2005
Luttwak: Al-Qaeda Didn't Do It. Its Offspring Did
Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a July 9, 2005 article in the Toronto Globe and Mail that, while many Muslims in Britain and Europe are angry and "especially offended by the humiliating gap between Islam's promise of power and glory and the reality of weak Muslim states, two of which are now occupied by British and U.S. troops," very few "reach the stage of joining the extremist groups that speak of using violence, and only a handful actually act, as in Madrid last year and now in London." He added: One reason for that is simply that it is not so easy to assemble and detonate bombs. True, instructions can be found on the Internet, but it is much easier to talk of bombs than to make them. Nor can prospective terrorists receive help from al-Qaeda, for the very good reason that al-Qaeda no longer exists as an organization -- and since it was only that, it no longer exists at all.
Mr. Luttwak said, Al-Qaeda's "surviving leaders from Osama bin Laden down have tried but failed to replace the training camps, logistics and command structure they lost in Afghanistan. All that remains is the brand name," he said, "which retains its appeal for angry Muslims everywhere largely because of the inexcusable failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, itself the result of the Central Intelligence Agency's incompetence."
For more, see "Al-Qaeda didn't do it. Its offspring did."
Posted by Munir Umrani at July 9, 2005 01:31 PM
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