My theme on DK has been Theocracy as threat #1 to half a millennium of Progress.
This diary is to stamp an exclamation mark on Our killing of the terrorist Zawahiri, since Khomeini, the archetype’s archetype of a violent theocrat. Celebration isn’t the right tone. Whatever the sentiment should be when justice is done.
He was a man who could have, should have, known better. An educated Egyptian, an MD, a physician (!) … Hippocrates rolls in his grave ... not some bedouin or random sheikh from the brigand mountains of Yemen or a lucky oil patch. A scion of one of the most illustrious intellectual families of arguably the intellectual capital of Islamistan … an entire civilization that has run for 1300 years.
And yet, he was radicalized, turned jihadi/terrorist.
Blues, we need to develop our sophistication in understanding our foes. If out and out Christian Nationalist terrorism comes to the USA — meaning not just a failed putsch by some bumbling weekend warrior Pottery Barn MAGA wackos, with violence but not that many actual deaths in the event, rather with hundreds or thousands killed in bombings and gun battles — it will likely follow the pattern laid down by the Islamic Brotherhood over the past 70 years, of which Zawahiri was a Boss.
Whether it’s Giovanni Gentile as the brains behind Mussolini, or Bannon behind Trump or Zawahiri behind bin Laden, that combo of the charismatic (or at least hypnotizing) public speaker/Twitter/YouTuber/RonBurgundy thespian/masquerader external face spilling out the thoughts of a smarter producer type (in the live TV News sense) ... a formula that has worked for millennia.
The simple way to think of Zawahiri was he was That Guy (“Z1”). He provided the philosophical /cerebral rationale not just for 9/11 but for all of the Sunni Islamic violent radicalism of the last three decades.
Note how prominent the Sunni vs. Shia schism is in this famous letter from Zawahiri to an even more radicalized Z-man, the one who brought streamed beheadings to a generation, Abu Zarqawi (“Z2”), the founder of ISIS. This letter has been required reading for anyone in the USA’s “External Services” (= DoD, State, Intelligence) for roughly a decade, and the link just above is to West Point’s digital edition. Two quick snippets, the old sage trying to teach the young lion:
(C) People of discernment and knowledge among Muslims know the extent
of danger to Islam of the Twelve'er school of Shiism. It is a religious school
based on excess and falsehood whose function is to accuse the companions of
Muhammad { of heresy in a campaign against Islam, in order to free the way for a group of those who call for a dialogue in the name of the hidden mahdi who is in control of existence and infallible in what he does. Their prior history in cooperating with the enemies of Islam is consistent with their current reality of connivance with the Crusaders.
And then some classic NobleLie/casuistry/taqiayyah:
(E) We must repeat what we mentioned previously, that the majority of Muslims don't comprehend this and possibly could not even imagine it. For that reason, many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks on the Shia. The sharpness of this questioning increases when the attacks are on one of their mosques, and it increases more when the attacks are on the mausoleum of Imam Ali Bin Abi Talib, may God honor him. My opinion is that this matter won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace however much you have tried to explain it, and aversion to this will continue.
[Emphases added]
Indeed, at 13 pages in translation, it’s a long-ish read, but for the thoughtful DK community, time well spent if you want to know #HowTheWorldWorks. Anyone who thinks our enemies — the jihadis, the Russians, the Chinese and their pawns like the NorKs — are rubes needs to think again.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Over in old Mesopotamia, says Z1 to Z2, what really matters is Sunnis defeating the Shias, but that can’t happen until the decks have been cleared and the “Crusaders” (= Americans) and their pawns the Zionists/Israelis have been expelled. Yup. That’s the big picture. Same as it was back in the 7th Century.
What is especially gratifying, as a fan of the surgical strike against UBL in Abbottabad back in May 2011, is how we took out Zawahiri in August 2022 with no collateral damage, in the heart of Taliban-held Kabul. Science and its fruit technology triumphs over superstition once again.