The Gathering Storm Report publishes a "Weekly Think Piece."
I've been pontificating of late on the background to the Gathering Storm that seeks to engulf us. I wanted to 'backfill', so to speak, on the model that supports my thesis - primarily why we are war and how it is being prepared by our enemy. But as I said in the 'tag' "What This Blog is About", this blog is about a Gathering Storm - the prelude to the real war, not the war itself. How the war will be fought and under what terms it will commence is yet to happen.I still stand on the statement that how the 'real war' will start - that is, when the free world finally awakes from the enemy induced slumber. When the war arrives, it will be succinct, clear to everyone and with a focused objective - as it did for Europe on September 1st, 1939 and America on December 7th, 1941.
I wrote in the same article that those who think this is some kind of new war are basically wrong.
Islamists are using an age old tactic of guerrilla warfare - its use of the Viet Cong by the North Vietnamese is a recent example. We call it terrorism today. But the objective is the same. Weaken the opposition using surrogates by hitting them where it's difficult or impossible to respond. Then follow up with conventional forces from the host nations that supported the insurgency with uniformed combatants.
Now it seems that I've been proven right - by the jihadists themselves, of all people. In a blog entry entitled Al Qaeda Building Army in Preparation for Long War, the Jawa Report summarizes a long analysis from a fascinating article at the Jamestown Foundation. In the Jamestown Foundation analysis, Michael Scheuer reports on the strategic writings of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia leader Abu Hajar Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin. It seems that al-Muqrin has given a lot of thought to the "long war" against the United States. Yes, al-Muqrin apparently is in agreement with the Bush Administration that this will be a long and protracted war. A conflict that is not the 'war on terror' - a most ignorant and deceiving description of the struggle we are in. It is ignorant because it is senseless and it is deceiving because it camouflages our actual enemy, making us more vulnerable. Terrorism is a tactic, not a foe. To declare war on terror is akin to saying that World War II should have been fought to rid the world of naval armada's and blitzkrieg. If we had focused our energies on killing every kamikaze suicide bomber and every S.S. terrorist, the political and religious regimes that manufactured them, unchecked, would have produced far more of them far faster than we could have killed them.al-Muqrin also agrees with my analysis that the jihadists will eventually have to create a standing army to reach their final objectives of creating a world ruled by Islam and finally overthrow the free democracies. al-Muqrin says in so many words that those who use terrorism must build "a military force that becomes the nucleus of a military army."
In other words, insurgents who use terrorist tactics can not win the war themselves. To do that, like in every war before this, you must occupy enemy territory to win and force your ideology on the population. That means putting boots on the ground.
I see the coming war being fought this way.
1. Militaristic Jihad: Like all other wars, there will be a theater of battle. That theater stretches from North Africa through the Middle East through south-central Asia to Southeast Asia and Malaysia. Some Islamic nation or nations will lead the alliance in this war of fronts. Today, it looks and sounds like Iran may be that nation led by their blustering President. FrontPageMag reports that Iran is currently shifting to a war footing. Speaking to the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Iranian president warned Europe that they will "suffer the consequences" if they did not capitulate to Iran's demands. There is an eerie parallel to Hitler's Germany in Iran. The messianic Shi'ite has conducted a purge of high-level political opponents from national offices, seemingly with the blessing of the Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. The New York Times reports on the "consolidation" underway in Teheran. However, FrontPageMagwrites, what the Times fails to comprehend is that, much like the Nazi "consolidation" in the early days of their rule, the accumulation of power to one man allows for streamlined internal decision making, not external, where Khameini always held the power. That kind of structure lends itself to one purpose: war. Why else would all decision-making power get concentrated in the hands of two men, and all mechanisms for dissent eliminated? Iran will get the bomb and they will show other Islamic states how to build their own. That is a forgone conclusion since the free world seems not to have the moral spine to stop this from happening.
2. Demographic Jihad: Europe is well on its way to being absorbed by Islam. The socialist leftist European leaders, under the oppression of political correctness and multiculturalism, can not or will not see the threat before them even though the plan to do so was made public by the jihadits. Eventually, Europe will become a staging area for military and political operations against the jihadists' most formidable enemy of all - the United States.
3. Economic Jihad: America is a different case. To defeat us, they will either have to occupy our territory or make us sue for peace - and occupy us later - as the Japanese tried in World War II. The Japanese new they couldn't march down Pennsylvania Avenue so they sought to damage us enough that under economic pain and the inability to protect ourselves, we would sue for peace. From the Jamestown Foundation report: "At some point, al Qaeda realizes, it is not enough to simply weaken the will of the enemy. The goal of terrorists is not to "terrorize". Terrorism is a method, not a goal. Al Qaeda's goal is the same goal as the Council on American Islamic Relations or the Muslim American Society--the imposition of Sharia law and the eventual restoration of the global Caliphate. What separates CAIR from al Qaeda is not the goal, but only the means to achieve it."
What would be the response of the free world when the real shooting war commences?
Militaristic jihad will be confronted in the conventional way. And by conventional, I don't necessarily mean without nuclear weapons. The militaries of the free world and Islamic nation states will confront each other in the theater of battle I have stated. Here's a dirty of little secret about nuclear weapons. When people think of them they think of the ones that can level cities. But there are also tactical nukes that are basically only a big bomb or big shell. The US military is quite prepared to use these tactic nukes as they did during the Cold War. I know. I was in a SASCOM (Special Ammunition Support Command) unit that was prepared to use them if the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Western Europe. What ever you might hear on why the USSR did not attack Western Europe, it had nothing to do with NATO's conventional forces or diplomacy. What kept the Russian bear at bay was our very public threat that we would use tactical nukes to stop their overwhelming conventional forces from overrunning Europe. Period. Russia knew that if it came to that, an elevation to a strategic nuclear response could follow. Game Over. So, the use of tactical nukes are not out of the questions if we're confronted with the Iranian military tactic of sending wave after wave of suicide attacks against our frontline sending them all to see Allah.
Demographic Jihad. Will Europe roll over easily and play dead? Probably not. What I see is civil war between muslims and Europeans similar to the civil war in Spain in the early 1930s. The jihadists, using their infiltration tactics have successfully set up their command and control centers in mosques throughout out Europe. Propaganda, recruitment and weapons storage are their stock in trade. The civil war will be a bloody, no holds barred conflict between western and Islamic populations. Not very pretty.
Economic jihad, as a goal of terrorist acts inside the US, will not succeed. First, our economy has gone through the Great Depression and we still kept our democratic ideals. The American eagle is tough old bird not matter what the elitists believe. But what if terrorism comes to the point of really damaging our infrastructure and economy? Befor that happens I see muslims and muslim supporters being interned like the Japanese-Americans were in World War II. Not a pretty prospect for muslims in this country. But it can and probably will come to that in time of war. The movie The Siege gives a good example of this probability but this time the Hollywood FBI will not ride to the muslim rescue in defense of their rights.
The Japanese the analogy is not that far off. We are fighting an enemy that is fanatical, suicidal and doesn't fear death - in fact they embrace it. They fight for their god and fully expect to die for him and achieve heaven. Death is even preferable to life. The Japanese saw their enemy as sub-human and treated them hideously. The Japanese soldiers and civilians of World War II have given us a small taste of the brutal, no holds barred type of war we will be fighting.
I'm no Nostradamus - and neither was Nostradamus for that matter - but I believe that when the shooting war finally comes, it will play out something like what I have proposed. And with apologies to Thomas Hobbes, the war when it comes will be nasty, brutish - and we pray - short.
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