Islamic terrorism

[This web page contains information
to which other posts in my blog refer.
It is not really intended to be read independently,
but of course it can be.
The date does not represent when content was added,
but was selected just to get it “out of the way.”]

What follows are descriptions of Islamic terrorism
from Michael Scheuer’s
Through Our Enemies’ Eyes (TOEE) and Imperial Hubris (IH).

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Hezbollah

Michael Scheuer describes Hezbollah (or Hizballah, in his spelling)
at several places in IH.
Here are the most relevant ones (with emphasis added):

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[IH, pages 76–77]

Al Qaeda ... has expanded its presence in Lebanon.
That country has long been home
to the Shia insurgent group Hizballah,
which is still ranked as the most dangerous such organization—
ahead of al Qaeda—
by some U.S. officials, politicians, and academics;
a senior U.S. senator, for example, continues to assert that
“Hizballah of course is the A-team of terrorists ...,”
while a respected Harvard academician concludes that
the Lebanese group
“is the most sophisticated terrorist group in the world.”
These assertions are seconded by
a seemingly endless stream of media “experts”
who are, as a group,
stuck in a time warp
where state sponsors and their surrogates
are deemed most dangerous to U.S. interests.
Indeed, these officials, politicians, and experts have
concocted a piece of analysis by assertion that
subordinates al Qaeda as a junior partner
in an alliance with Hizballah,
one that is directed by Iran
toward the goal of destroying the United States and Israel.
...
This view has been put forth so many times,
by so many “in-the-know” people,
that it is now unthinkingly accepted when heard.
It is, however, a piece of common wisdom
that is uncommonly wrong.
Al Qaeda and Hizballah share two things:
each nurtures a burning hatred for the United States, and
each has a set of insurgent training camps
that has been ignored for decades
by the United States and its allies.
While there are surely contacts between the groups,
and perhaps some sharing of data and expertise,
the only operational cooperations and joint attacks occurring
are in
the muddled minds of U.S. and Western officials and analysts—
and a former director of central intelligence
[surely he is referring to Woolsey]—
who cannot escape
the antiquated state-sponsor-of-terrorism paradigm.

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[IH, page 112]

[T]he bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983
was conducted by Hizballah ... [to advance]
its simple goal of
preventing the U.S. military
from establishing a long-term presence in Lebanon.

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1998 Bombings of American Embassies in Africa

[TOEE, page 200]

[On 1998-08-07] Bin Laden’s fighters
attacked the U.S. embassies
in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
with car bombs within minutes of each other;
12 Americans died and 7 were wounded;
291 Africans were killed and nearly 5,100 were wounded.
Bin Laden praised the attackers
“who risked their lives
to earn the pleasure of God, Praise and Glory be to him,”
describing them as
“real men, the true personification of the word men.
They managed to rid the Islamic nation of disgrace.
We highly respect them and hold them in the highest esteem.”
In late 2000 Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) fighter Ali Mohammed
told a U.S. court he had surveilled and photographed
the U.S. embassy in Nairobi at bin Laden’s direction
and that later
“bin Laden looked at the picture of the American embassy
and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber.”