America's unpreparedness, both psychologically and in terms of contingency planning, is one reason the world's most notorious terrorist organization has conducted a tactical shift over the past three years, turning to something I call the “Chip Away” strategy. For the moment, al-Qaeda has readjusted its plan for the United States, lowering the bar a bit, so to speakâaiming for smaller-scale attacks that occur with greater frequency, rather than waiting for years to pull off the next Big One.
While lacking the symbolism and history-altering qualities of 9/11âthe kind of effect al-Qaeda cravesâthese smaller attacks, if carried out steadily, can “chip away” at a society's confidence and security. There is a growing fear among the U.S. intelligence community that this is precisely the new prototype for al-Qaeda: small, grassroots, and inexpensive,
with individuals or tiny splinter groups executing attacks. And while al-Qaeda unleashes a series of smaller-scale assaults that keeps America off balance, it continues to plot larger, more long-term attacks that would dwarf 9/11.
The question as to whether al-Qaeda's hierarchyâa prideful bunch, to say the leastâhas come around to endorsing the Chip Away strategy was put to rest in March 2010 by American-born al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, who issued a videotape extolling Nidal Malik Hasan and his killing spree at Fort Hood, perhaps the most notorious Chip Away attack. Gadahn is close to al-Qaeda's hierarchy in the tribal regions of Pakistan, and his statement provided valuable insights into the group's current thinking:
The Mujahid Brother Nidal Hasan used firearms in his assault on Fort Hood, but the fact is, today's Mujahid is no longer limited to bullets and bombs when it comes to his choice of a weapon. As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a minimal budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon, which can take the enemy by surprise and deprive him of sleep for years on end.
... When the time came to pick his target, the Mujahid Brother Nidal chose carefully, looking for a target with which he was well acquainted, a target which was feasible and a target whose hitting would have a major impact on the enemy.... [A]s you start to make your plans, you shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage to the Crusader West and further our global agenda and long-range strategic objectives.
We must look to further undermine the West's alreadystruggling economies with carefully-timed-and-targeted attacks on symbols of capitalism, which will again shake consumer confidence and stifle spending. We must keep in mind how even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy. We must erode our cowardly enemy's will to fight by killing and capturing leading Crusaders and Zionists in government, industry and media. ... We should look for targets which epitomize Western decadence, depravity, immorality and atheism, targets which the enemy and his mouthpieces will have trouble trying to pass off to the conservative Muslim majority as illegitimate targets full of innocent people.
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Bear in mind that Gadahn's statements are issued in English and targeted specifically to a Western audience. The message is clear:
Rise up, young American Muslims, and wage jihad now, in any way you can. And hey, even if you fail, the mere attempt could still spread panic and disorder.
Today, any Muslim can take part in the jihad and strike a powerful blow against non-Muslims. The aforementioned
Inspire
magazine, which intelligence officials believe is published by an American citizen living in Yemen named Samir Khan, has made this abundantly clear. The Webbased al-Qaeda glossy regularly provides terror tips for aspiring Western jihadists. One article, titled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” recommends driving a four-wheel drive pickup truck into a crowd of people to act as a “mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.” The author may have been inspired by Mohammed Taheri-Azar, the Tar Heel Terrorist who drove his SUV through a crowd of students in a 2006 jihadist attack on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Another
Inspire
article calls for killing U.S. government workers through firearms attacks on crowded restaurants in Washington, D.C. “Targeting such employees is paramount,” the article states, “and the location would also give the operation additional media attention.” Perhaps the ultimate
Inspire
how-to piece, though, came in the inaugural issue: it was called “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
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So we have al-Qaeda's chief English-language spokesman and its leading publication both publicly endorsing Chip Away attacks on U.S. soil. It's the kind of scenario that Attorney General Eric Holder says keeps him “up at night.”
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Obama administration officials see clearly the coordinated shift in terrorist tactics. Yet their public response, from the president on down, has been to ignore the obvious pattern and treat each attempted Chip Away attack as a one-off fluke carried out by an “isolated extremist.” Such attacks, Obama and his cabinet assure us, have nothing to do with the true teachings of Islam and are condemned by Muslims worldwide.
If only that were true. The following list of the most prominent Chip Away attacks and plots on U.S. soil since 2009, including the U.S. government's response to each, shows a risible pattern of dishonesty from the Obama administration, reflecting a profound lack of seriousness and understanding when it comes to the jihadist threat.
THE FORT HOOD SHOOTINGS: NOVEMBER 4, 2009
U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shoots more than forty people, killing thirteen of them, including a pregnant women, in a terrorist rampage on a military base in Fort Hood, Texas. He is shot and left paralyzed during the attack and now awaits sentencing. Witnesses say that Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, shouted “Allahu Akhbar” before opening fire on the soldiers, who were preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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It is later revealed that prior to the shootings, he had exchanged e-mails with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Following the
slaughter at Fort Hood, Hasan is praised on jihadist websites as a hero and role model by Awlaki and others.
Talk about the Chip Away blueprint. An Islamic jihadist who is a U.S. citizen patiently climbs the ranks of the U.S. Army. When the time is right, he carries out a murderous, low-tech attack that shakes the militaryâan institution that, for Islamists, symbolizes America's supposed war on Islamâto its foundation.
It was a massacre and massive security breach that should never have happened. Once Hasan's superiors got wind of his undisguised pro-jihad behavior prior to the shootings, his military career should have come to a swift and unceremonious end. It was impossible to miss the warning signals. Hasan did everything but parade around the base wearing a T-shirt that read, “I am an Islamic terrorist.” He was, however, captured on surveillance video on the morning of the attacks wearing full Islamic garb at a local convenience store, so he wasn't far off.
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And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some further clues, evident to anyone with the slightest understanding of Islamic terrorism, that Hasan was on the road to jihad:
⢠Shortly after the attacks, some of Hasan's former classmates at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences described him to
Time
magazine as an America-hating Islamist who had no business in the U.S. military. One described him as a “ticking time bomb”:
“We asked him pointedly, âNidal, do you consider Shari'a law to transcend the Constitution of the United States?' And he said, âYes,'” a classmate told TIME. ... “We asked him if homicidal bombers were rewarded for their acts with 72 virgins in heaven and he responded, âI've done the researchâyes.' Those are comments he made in front of the class.” But such statements apparently didn't trigger an inquiry. “I was astounded and went to multiple faculty and asked why he was
even in the Army,” the officer said. “Political correctness squelched any opportunity to confront him.”
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What a shameâbecause as the
Time
article describes, there were plenty of opportunities to confront Hasan, who was widely regarded by his superiors as a lazy, below-average performer:
“He wore his rigid Islam ideology on his sleeve and weaved it throughout his coursework,” says the third classmate. “He would be standing there in uniform pledging allegiance to the Koran.”
The third classmate says he witnessed at least three oral presentations by Hasan over the course of a year that focused on the morality of Muslims, war and justification for suicide bombers. “People were giving presentations on air quality or water quality, but he'd be full of psychobabble about how the persecution of Muslims justifies suicide bombers,” the officer says. After a while, Hasan's classmates “would just roll our eyes saying, âHere we go again.'”
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One can only guess his colleagues' reaction when their resident Islamist was later promoted to the rank of majorâor when he was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan to assist the United States in what he openly viewed as a war against Islam.
⢠Hasan carried business cards that bore the jihadi inscription SoA, or “Soldier of Allah.” The cards' green and white design matched the colors of Islam. They did not mention his U.S. military rank.
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⢠The FBI intercepted at least ten e-mails Hasan had sent to Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda recruiter who's had a hand in several homegrown jihad plots. In the e-mails, Hasan gushed that he couldn't wait to
join Awlaki in the afterlife, and asked the terror cleric questions about jihad and suicide bombings .
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Incredibly, a joint terrorism task force convened prior to the Fort Hood attack concluded that Hasan's outreach to Awlaki wasâbrace yourselfâpart of his research as a psychiatrist. The task force never opened any sort of in-depth investigation, and never passed the e-mails on to the Department of Defense.
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Awlaki, interestingly enough, was imam of the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, in 2001, when he presided over the funeral of Hasan's mother.
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In the aftermath of the jihadist rampage in Texas, he referred to himself as Hasan's “confidant,” calling the Fort Hood killer “a hero” and “man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”
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⢠In those e-mail exchanges Hasan also wrote, “My strength is my financial capabilities.” Federal investigators have disclosed that Hasan donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year to Islamic “charities” overseas, a method that has been used time and again to raise funds for terrorism.
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Hasan's repeated pro-jihad statements, his relationship with Awlaki, and for crying out loud, his shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” as he was gunning down U.S. troops in cold blood lead to only one conclusion: Hasan was a jihadist who carried out the worst Islamic terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Yet as of this writing, more than a year after the Fort Hood attack, the Obama administration has yet to use the words “Islam” or “terrorism” when referring to Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood.
But Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, speaking from a conference inâof all placesâthe United Arab Emirates, did utter the word “Muslim” in reference to Nidal Hasan's actions: she warned against “anti-Muslim sentiment” and declared that Hasan “does not represent the Muslim faith.”
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Yes, ten years after 9/11, Napolitano and her compadres on the Left are still more concerned about an imaginary anti-Muslim backlash than they are about real-life Muslim terrorists.
As for her religious ruling that Hasan does not represent Islam, it's a shame that Napolitano is a woman; otherwise, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia might have made her an honorary sheikh.
True to form, in January 2010 the Department of Defense issued the results of an internal investigation into the Hasan case that completely ignored his well-documented jihadist ideology and correspondence with Awlaki. In fact, the 86-page report did not mention Islam at all, nor did it even mention Hasan by name.
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No, in a stunning display of intellectual cowardice, Pentagon bureaucrats just couldn't bring themselves to admit what motivated Hasan to murder thirteen of his fellow soldiers. The rampant political correctness of today's U.S. military was epitomized by the Army's top officer, General George Casey, who appeared on CNN shortly after the Fort Hood attack and fretted that speculation over Hasan's jihadist motivations could cause a backlash against Muslim soldiers.
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He went further on NBC's
Meet the Press
, saying, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse.”
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Really? Does Casey truly believe that having a few less Muslims in the military is a bigger tragedy than the slaughter of thirteen U.S. soldiers who were needlessly ripped from their families forever? In one fell swoop, Casey showed he is unfit to lead the Army in an existential struggle against global Islamism. With men like him running the show, is it any wonder Hasan was promoted through the ranks despite his jihadist inclinations? Hey, having a Muslim major showed the diversity and tolerance of the U.S. military, and the brass couldn't afford to lose him, especially at a time when we are trying to win those ever-elusive Islamic hearts and minds abroad.