National Review Online Translations of this item: Italian Portuguese At the inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) back in April, presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration. Though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine … [Read more...]
Search Results for: taqiyya
Osama Bin Laden: Man of Love?
Middle East Strategy at Harvard In many ways, Michael Scheuer is the paradigmatic case of an otherwise knowledgeable and experienced Western adult who takes Al Qaeda's word at face value. According to his book, Imperial Hubris, his credentials and thus authority to speak about Al Qaeda and its goals are impressive: "For the past seventeen years, my career has focused … [Read more...]
Know Your Enemy
American Thinker Barack Obama's National Security Advisor Richard Danzig recently made a fool of himself by claiming thatWinnie the Pooh is a "fundamental text on national security." His flippancy only emphasizes the fact that doctrinal writings influence the conduct of war. To anticipate the enemy's thinking, you have to know the foundational texts in which his mind has been … [Read more...]
Islam’s War Doctrines Ignored
Middle East Strategy at Harvard At the recent inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration: that, though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine—such as Clausewitz's On War, Sun Tzu's The Art … [Read more...]
Jihadi Studies as Trivia
Middle East Strategy at Harvard A new article by Thomas Hegghammer in the Times Literary Supplement, entitled "Jihadi studies: the obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better," lives up to its title—not so much by delineating what these obstacles are, but rather by being representative of them. Regrettably, the author evokes the same old … [Read more...]
Tristan Abbey, The Stanford Review
The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim New York: Doubleday, 2007. 352 pp. $15.95, paper. Reviewed by Tristan Abbey The Stanford Review "Stop hurting us and we'll stop hurting you." That is the message Americans get from al Qaeda. In his fascinating new book, historian Raymond Ibrahim explains that the jihadists say one thing to CNN, and quite another to fellow … [Read more...]
Gary H. Johnson, Jr., American Thinker
The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim New York: Doubleday, 2007. 352 pp. $15.95, paper. Reviewed by Gary H. Johnson, Jr. American Thinker Recently, Raymond Ibrahim edited and translated into English a decade's worth of public releases by al Qaeda's leadership. Published by Broadway Books, with partial proceeds donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists, … [Read more...]
Lying, Defying, and Demoralizing
OBL's three-fold strategy to defeat the West Private Papers Like all of Osama bin Laden's previous messages to the West, his most recent communiqué contains three Ladenese trademarks — lying, defying, and demoralizing — that are always present whenever the al Qaeda chieftain addresses the West. That bin Laden has publicly lied before, there is no doubt. After the strikes of … [Read more...]