Algeria: veterans of Libya assault were in gas plant attack
The New York Times quotes Algerian officials who have said that some of the terrorists who attacked the gas plant last week were also involved in the attack on the Benghazi US consulate last Fall.
If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members, raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after the mission in Benghazi was overrun.
What was that the President said about the “perpetual war” that he mentioned in his address the other day? I think it went something like this; “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” Unfortunately for him, and us, our enemies have been in a state of perpetual war since before the first millennium. And they know that we don’t have the political will to eradicate them from the face of the earth. And they don’t mire themselves in minutia – like the al-Shabab creeps who displayed the dead French soldier (Thanks to jerry920 for that link). We would stop the war and flay our own troops for that act, but this one will go unnoticed by most of the media and the American public.
Our war against al Qaeda wouldn’t have to be perpetual if someone would summon the testicular fortitude required to wipe them out instead of depending on drone strikes to nip at their heels. The treatment of that french soldier should galvanize the French into getting serious about killing terrorists in droves, but I’m sure it will have the opposite effect.
Category: Terror War
The idea of beating an enemy into an unconditional surrender has long since passed….now we fight as you point out, with inadequate manpower, limited drone strikes, and see an increasingly heavy presence of our enemy across multiple locations….you don’t have to be Patton or Rommel to understand the correlation between a lessening of US presence resulting in an increase in AQ presence….
Like cockroaches you need to burn those b4stards out of every hole….or they just keep coming back…
“We, the people,….” Oh brother. Talk about dramatics. That’s the first I read of his address. I’m sure there are teachers across the country (well, from one side of Jersey to another, anyway) requiring their students to memorize his little speechy.
Kind of hard to not fight a perpetual war when it is being waged on you Mr President… damned ostriches with their heads in the sand.
But but, but Obama and his crew say AQ is defeated and now they will leave us alone. Must be nice living in a fairy tale world with your head stuck up your ass. Or in the sand, which ever applies best.
Take three ICBMs — Aim one at Mecca. Aim one at Medina. Aim the third at some lesser but still well known highly visible mosque.
Give fair warning to the world – all muzzies pull back & leave the rest of the world alone – or else.
At the first attack, fire ICBM #3. After that, we either have peace, or batton down the hatches, there’s a shit storm a-comin’. And be prepared to fire ICBMs #1 & #2 ASAP.
Well, a guy can dream some, can’t he?
A related story in the news: France has surrendered unconditionally after a long and violent war with jihadists in north Africa.
@1: I’m not sure the Patton and Rommel comparisons are fair given the nature of the conflict these days – specifically, non-state actors who are a minority of the population of their current country. It’s a bit like a cancer – any weapon you throw at it also does harm to innocent life in the area, and do enough harm there and you destroy what you’re fighting to save. We need to continue to target carefully, and we need some sort of ‘vaccine’ that helps protect people from Islamic fundamentalism. Sadly, like the cancer analogy, we don’t yet have these tools mastered, and need to do some serious research on how best to achieve that goal.
My hope is that if we keep killing these bastards, the natural order will be that the most radical will be the ones taking up arms and dying, and hopefully the ones that remain will be more moderate and less stone-the-women and blow-up-infidel-kids types. I don’t think we’ve hit ‘peak-asshole’ yet, but at some point surely we’ll be on the downward slope of their recruitment efforts.
Problem is, General Mattis was dead balls on when he said we fight a war until the ENEMY decides it’s over, not us.
What this administration wants is for us to withdraw to within our borders, which will then provide the justification for evisceration of the military that we all know is coming.
Of course, in their benumbed little minds, at that point, nobody will have a reason to hate us and terrorism will never follow us home, now will it? Kum-bah-fuckin-ya and all that, and we’ve seen how well it’s worked so far.
Maybe we should ban all the weapons in Africa. That would stop this violence.
Bam Bam: bingo. What Africa needs is an assault weapons ban! (smile)
Amazing, ain’t it, how this administration is lending support to other nations (France) to fight a group they said didn’t even exist a few months ago?
What people will do/say to retain the reins of power.
@7 – good analogy with cancer. Key is to force the locals to cut out the cancer themselves. Wreak enough havoc to show them you mean business, i.e. The Surge, then tell them that if any threat comes toward us or our allies from their direction we will whack them so more. Something like “Don’t make me come back there and finish the job”.
Mubarak, Qaddafi, and Assad had no trouble keeping a lid on the terrorists, it’s the US efforts to back their downfalls that had led to this mess.
Why does everyone act so surprised? Remember when those “al-Masri” and “al-Libi” guys were running around in Iraq and Afghanistan? They came from Egypt and Libya, respectively.
What #13 said. “No shit.” No surprise here. All the fuckin inbred hadji’s in that part of the world are in cahoots anyway, but with Osama Bin Laden dead and Al Quaeda on the ropes, there really isn’t anything to be worried about. (end sarc)