Second Front (Naval) Austin Bay sends a link to an article he did for the Weekly Standard which describes some of the goals of Al Qaeda in ...
Second Front (Naval)
Austin Bay sends a link to an article he did for the
Weekly Standard which describes some of the goals of Al Qaeda in
Southeast Asia.
Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia lie first and foremost in JI's
geo-strategic kill zone. JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) has large plans for the whole
of Southeast Asia, plans dating from well before 9/11. Drawing on cadres
schooled in past radical political movements that used Islam as both a wedge
issue and a rallying cause, JI seeks to establish a grand "Islamic state"
stretching from southern Thailand through Malaysia, the Philippine and
Indonesian archipelagoes, and Australia. Indeed, JI produced a "green map"
where the reach of sharia, as interpreted by JI leadership, extends into the
Australian continent and New Guinea. Fanciful? Megalomaniacal? After 9/11 only
the willfully blind can dismiss the motivating power of such an imperial
eschatology.
At the time Bay was visiting Singapore, the JI was considering an attack on
American naval targets as a demonstration of their power, the better to rouse
the Muslim millions of the Southeast Asia.
The fast boat, packed with explosives and a suicide pilot, could slip from
an inlet on the Malaysian side, gun its engine, whirl around an islet, perhaps
Pulau Tekong, seeking the slate gray side of a carrier. ... An American
officer familiar with U.S. Navy security concerns in southeast Asia first
tipped me to the aircraft carrier scenario. "Singapore's a logical choice for
a 'super Cole' operation, or something similar," he said. That was October
2001.
Their method emphasizes patience. A videotape captured in Afghanistan showed
the surveillance of US naval targets in Singapore. Bay spoke to the director of
Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and asked how Al Qaeda could
obtain the personnel to carry out this scheme.
"Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia. They are clever, yes. They have an education
program. But their secret is no secret. It's money. Arab money. Saudi Arab
money."
"Can you prove that?"
"Where else but oil does it come from?" he says. "I know what I am told.
With that money they promote the Arabization of our Islam in Southeast Asia.
Object and you face personal violence."
That money was used to good effect in the United States itself. The object
was not to recruit a suicide attacker who would sink a supercarrier but merely
to assassinate the American President. As
Little Green Footballs notes, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the US citizen charged
with conspiring to assassinate President Bush, was not simply "a former Virginia
high school valedictorian" the regular newspapers make him out to be. The "high
school" he attended was a Saudi funded madrassa called the Islamic Saudi
Academy.
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