Yet another al-Qaeda number three man killed. I'm too tired to make a joke
« Hayes' Case for Obama | Main | Finally, The War »
We're Number Three
31 Jan 2008 07:19 pm
Comments (18)
These guys shoot more three than AI.
"You're number 3? Cuz you look like number 2 to me."
I like this comment over there:
"Tyrone: Being #3 in Al-queda is like being a 'creative vice president' at a Hollywood studio. There are dozens of them … and they are expendable."
This is the fundamental problem with ANY notion of using the military to take out a terrorist movement (as opposed to taking a few terrorists a la Che Guevara in Bolivia.)
They are expendable - and easily replaced. Even if you capture one and take down his whole cell - still easily replaced.
To defeat a MOVEMENT, you have to defeat - or remove yourself as a target of - its PREMISE.
The ONLY way to do that is to change your policies so you are no longer a target.
Read my lips. There IS NO military solution to terrorism. None. Nada. Zip. No way, Jose. Never happen. Fergeddaboudit.
Knock off ONE guy - sure. You want bin Laden, pay me, I'll arrange for him to be gotten (if he's still alive, which is doubtful.) The net effect on Al Qaeda or terrorism - zero.
Too tired to add a period to the end of your post, even. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is tired.
Al Qaeda in its present form is the result of a merger between a group led by bin Laden and a group led by al-Zawahiri. Those two guys are celebrity terrorists--too well-known for the US to get away with claiming to have killed, if it isn't true. No. 3, however, whoever he is, and if there really is such a position in al Qaeda, is below the celebrity threshold. Therefore, every time the US wants to trumpet a success against al Qaeda, and has a body it can produce, it claims to have killed al Qaeda No. 3 . . .
I don't think there IS any basis for a joke: You kill #3 in an organization, and unless there were only three people in it to begin with, somebody else is "#3". Doesn't mean you're propping up a dead body and shooting it again each week.
OTOH, Rea's got a point: You'd think for variety they'd kill #4 or #5 occasionally.
Being al-Qaeda #3 is amost as dangerous as being the drummer in Spinal Tapped.
Why wouldn't Al Qaeda, at their committee meetings, just hand the #3 slot to whatever guy had the most offensive beard odor lately?
I see that lots of people in the blogosphere immediately thought of the "drummer for Spinal Tap" line.
Oddly enough I never saw anyone else note that during the Fred Thompson buildup over the summer that Fred was to the Senate what Tito was to the Jackson 5.
The number three guy in AQ is kind of like
the red shirted Star Trek guys on the landing
party; not a job anyone would want...
Do you think we can get them to tell us who the new number 3 is so we can verify it the next time?
I doubt it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtKQpMoplYk
Nothing new under the sun. We're just gonna need another Timmy.
I always laugh at these too.....but the AP coverage of this thing had a very interesting comment:
Rosenbach said militants who rise to No. 3 al-Qaida positions, like al-Libi, are often in charge of planning operations, exposing them to capture or death. Others he named included Mohammed Atef, who was killed, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was captured.
"It has to be one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. They generally don't last longer than a year — mostly because the al-Qaida chief of operations has a large 'signature' resulting from planning operations," he said. "Our intelligence has done an excellent job in tracking them down."
I agree with Dan the AP comment is worth noting.
bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have gone dark and are not leaving much of anything for US electronic and ISI assets bought by the US to detect.
But those lower tasked with AQ's Ops, Recruitment, Finance - especially those in The Central Front of Jihad - are getting whacked as US and friendly Arab intelligence has grown exponentially from investigating the history of the dead radical Islamoids we take down in Iraq and from interrogating the intact and wounded ones - back to their networks, spititual mullahs, moneymen. Including in Pakistan. But like with Hez, there are enough that whacking a few leaders makes no strategic difference.
And agree with Hack that the Obama/Lefty delusion that our problem is simply a law enforcement problem, solved by catching the two and "Bringing them to justice" in a US civilian court room. That is a joke.
Shame Hack mars his posts with his ex-con snake oil claims that he has a "secret" method to get Binnie and Ayman for only a billion dollars. As if an ex-felon would be taken seriously on that or a "pay me 1 billion for my miracle cure for cancer" scam...
I don't think there IS any basis for a joke: You kill #3 in an organization, and unless there were only three people in it to begin with, somebody else is "#3".
Uh-huh. Yeah, right.
Like rea said, it's that there's a general sense of who counts as #1 and #2 in this particular 'organisation', and then there's 'everybody else'.
If Al-Q were to put out a press release declaring Abu Ali Al-Jihadi or whoever as the official #3, you'd find that #4s would be knocked off at the current Spinal-Tap-drummer rate.
"And agree with Hack that the Obama/Lefty delusion that our problem is simply a law enforcement problem, solved by catching the two and "Bringing them to justice" in a US civilian court room. That is a joke."
Ford, you know damn well that wasn't my point. It may not be simply a law enforcement problem, but it's not a military one - which IS my point.
And I never said I'd be taken seriously by anybody - which is their mistake, not mine. My intent is to point out that if you have a billion dollars - and a brain - you can find and take out almost anybody, particularly a couple of easily identifiable well-known Arab leaders. The point is: the US government doesn't want to find them - or has any brains.
Comments closed February 14, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
You could just outsource the joke to Boing Boing's Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009890.html
Posted by Iván | February 1, 2008 12:22 AM