More on the London attacks

Juan Cole reports on Michael Scheuer's reaction to the London bombing:

Implications of London Bombing Informed Comment blog 07/07/05

Scheuer believes that al-Qaeda is an insurgent ideology focused on destroying the United States and its allies, because its members believe that the US is trying to destroy them. Al-Qaeda members see the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, backed by the US; US support for military regimes like those of Pakistan and Egypt; and US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a US onslaught on Islam and Muslims aimed at reducing them to neo-colonial slavery. That is, specific Western policies are the focus of al-Qaeda response, not a generalized "hatred" of "values."

Scheuer opposes any attempt to configure the struggle against al-Qaeda as simple crime-fighting. He believes that they must be addressed through a thorough-going counter-insurgency effort.

All of this seemed sensible to me, and more sensible than most other analysts I heard.

Zachary Abuza at the Counterterrorism blog has the following observation about the evolution of Al Qaeda.  Shades of 3/11 07/07/05

First, the current Al Qaeda line regarding targeting was set in a statement by Osama bin Laden aired on Al Jazeera in October 2002: “We will target the nodes of your economy.” To that end nearly every major terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda affiliated or inspired group since then has targeted soft economic targets: tourist venues (Bali, Mombasa, Jakarta, Tunisia, Morocco), the energy sector (the SS Limburg), the financial sector (Istanbul); and of course public transportation (Madrid and now London). There is very little that liberal democracies can do against such open-ended targeting.

Second, many terrorism experts assert that Al Qaeda, as an organization, is defunct. What is left of the leadership, they argue, is hiding in Wajiristani root cellars. I think they overstate Al Qaeda’s demise; but they do agree that the real threat that Al Qaeda poses is less as an organization and more as an ideology and inspiration.

Prior to the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, the organization reportedly had a more centralized command-and-control structure.  That's why the failure at Tora Bora was so serious in its implications.  If the US had been able to capture or kill Bin Laden and his senior cadre that were at Tora Bora, rather than having most of them escape to fight and conspire another day, it would have done far more damage to the global jihadist movement than a single battle could do today.  Since then, the terrorism experts tell us, Al Qaeda has a dopted a far more decentralized mode of operation, relying more on an inspirational and franchising role.

This is why I more often refer to "jihadists" or the "jihadist movement" rather than Al Qaeda.

Juan Cole has previously noted that Al Qaeda seemed to be particularly fixated on transportation as a particular weakness of Western economies.