Al-Qaeda officially has a new leader in Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man who long served as Osama bin Laden’s number two in command. But does that have any impact on America? Heritage’s James Carafano says “Not much, actually.” Threats against America remain unchanged: First off, al-Qaeda is still determined to foster global terrorism and attack the United States. That’s nothing new. Carafano writes: As soon as Seal Team Six reported in, terrorism experts started predicting that Al Qaeda would take revenge. Now they’re saying that Zawahiri will stage a big …
The announcement that Osama bin Laden’s longtime second in command, Ayman al Zawahiri, will lead the fractured terrorist group came as no surprise to pundits and observers. Since joining forces with bin Laden in 1998, al Zawahiri had jointly pursued a series of dramatic assaults on the United States and Western interests abroad, including the tragic attacks of 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in 2000. While the ascendance of al Zawahiri to lead al Qaeda Central is largely anticlimactic, his appointment nonetheless …
Last week, Waad Ramadan Alwan and his cousin Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The men, both Iraqi refugees, had been allegedly picking up machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades from a nearby storage facility and delivering them to be shipped to al-Qaeda. It seems that the men never had any plans to attack targets in the United States, keeping them from being added to the ranks of the 39 publically known terrorist plots against the United States since 9/11. However, the incident does serve as a chilling …
Materials obtained in the U.S. SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden confirm what Heritage suspected all along: Al-Qaeda considered attacking tanker ships and other maritime energy infrastructure. Bin Laden expected to drive up the price of oil and intended to cause considerable damage to the U.S. and other oil-dependent economies. As The Heritage Foundation’s 2008 and 2010 energy simulations showed, organized terrorist attacks would cause a massive disruption and long-term decline in oil production and have a significant global geo-economic impact. Both of Heritage’s simulations of terrorism-caused energy crises …
The Arab Spring may be becoming a long hot summer. In the President’s major speech on the Middle East yesterday, it seemed pretty clear that he has moved on from Libya and turned his attention back to the Arab–Israeli peace process. Attention deficit disorder, however, may not be the right answer. There is a disturbing news report that two men arrested in Tunisia were “suspected of being members of al-Qaeda.” They were picked up near the Libyan border “carrying an explosives belt and several bombs, a security source told Reuters.… …
After Osama bin Laden’s death, it is clear that the war on terrorism is not over. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former al-Qaeda’s number two, may take over as bin Laden’s heir, unless the interim operations leader Saif al-Adel, the former Egyptian commando with Iranian ties, gets the job. In the meantime, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active and dangerous of al-Qaeda affiliate terrorist organizations, has embarked upon expanding the global reach of its supporters. AQAP recently translated al-Qaeda’s online journal Inspire into Russian in an effort to attract …
Let there be no doubt: The decision to kill Osama bin Laden was perfectly legal. The Heritage Foundation’s Cully Stimson explains in National Review Online’s “The Corner” that Congress empowered the president to take action: Bin Laden declared war on the United States twice in the 1990s. As the leader of al-Qaeda, he was responsible for September 11, 2001, and numerous other terrorist attacks. By joining in war against the U.S., bin Laden acted to ensure that the law governing police or human-rights law wouldn’t be applicable to his fate. …
With the killing of Osama bin Laden, a significant strategic and symbolic blow was dealt to al-Qaeda and its network of affiliated terrorist organizations. The cache of intelligence obtained during the raid on bin Laden’s compound revealed the terrorist mastermind to be an active and integral player in the engineering of al-Qaeda’s ongoing attempts to wreak havoc against the West. The long-term implications of having killed bin Laden are no doubt favorable to the ongoing efforts of the United States and our allies to contain and eradicate the jihadi threat. …
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Jim Carafano discusses the death of Osama bin Laden. He explores its implications for our fight against terrorism moving forward, how it affects our relationship with Pakistan, and more. Click here to listen. And what about the notion that since we killed bin Laden, it’s time to declare victory in the War on Terror? The terrorists don’t seem to think so. Earlier, a senior al-Qaeda official by pseudonym “Assad al-Jihad2,” posting on a jihadist website, vowed revenge, stating that anyone who thinks that jihad has ended just …
Justice has been done. Nearly 10 years since the 9/11 attacks that left more than 3,000 Americans dead, Osama bin Laden was killed by a small team of U.S. military personnel operating under the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency. We first want to congratulate the men and women of our military and intelligence communities, past and present, who worked tirelessly across three Administrations to bring ultimate justice to the man who killed so many. The war on terror, though, is not over. Bin Laden’s death is the most significant victory in …
