Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Dunedan
My big concern is this: what happens when a moderate young Muslim man, say college age kid, who's been attending the Cordoba House...has his car torched? Or gets beaten up? Is he going to listen to the moderates anymore? Or is he going to listen to the extremists who tell him "Of course they beat you up! Of course they burned your car! They're Infidels and Jews, kid, that's what Infidels and Jews -do-! They hate and kill Muslims! See? Look what they did to -you-! Didn't anybody tell you we're at WAR with these people?"
And the next thing you know, another Neo-Islamic Totalitarian Radical is borne. And guess what? This one -is- Americanized, this one speaks with no accent, this one has an intense personal grievance and a very good cover for whatever nastiness Usama et al decide he's best for.
And these anti-Mosque demonstrators will have nobody to blame but themselves and their more violent hangers-on for whatever that formerly moderate kid goes and does.
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This is a real problem and a valid point but I'd like to counter with the fact that The Base (Core) has had minimal (if any, I haven't heard of it) with direct domestic recruitment. You may have been speaking in general, but taken literally? It just doesn't happen. According to the classes I've taken and those that I know in the field, it doesn't occur because the group with the brains in the formal organization is fragmented and they've all been too busy running for their lives to be a cohesive unit capable of the organization required to train or even provide funding for an internal recruitment staffed operation.
I realize I'm speaking about this as if it is fact. In reality it's probably just DoS's and the Agency's best guess. Who knows?
"Propaganda with instruction" domestic terrorism events will continue (perhaps escalate) but I think it's inaccurate to suggest that our boy Usama and his crew will be at the reigns. It's a little like saying that Richard Bachman told all those kids to shoot up their schools by writing a fiction novel that appealed to them because they could relate to the main character. The Base (Core) uses their their propaganda tools, including their dumpy white spokesman, YouTube videos, and really bad "Jihad Rap" songs, to indirectly inspire anti-Western activities. This isn't like that Lackawanna boys situation where you have a The Base dude on the ground in the US urging kids to buy a ticket to Pakistan and go play army in the desert for Allah.
The terrorist attacks of the future will be perpetrated by young male US citizens that were recruited and trained via YouTube and Web forums.
/threadjack