Say Anything Blog

With much of its leadership captured or killed, its financial networks disrupted, and the sanctuary offered by the Taliban government gone, al-Qaeda has been forced to adapt.

Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, now appear less like generals and more like talking heads, disseminating their violent ideology via satellite television (Terrorism Focus) in hopes of inspiring others to do their bidding.

Though some say the loss of its operations base in Afghanistan makes al-Qaeda less dangerous than it was five years ago, others point to its ability to inspire terror as evidence of its staying power.

Jason Burke, a terrorism expert and reporter for Britain’s Observer newspaper asks, “What’s easier to fight, an organization or an idea?”

Indeed, efforts to counter al-Qaeda’s ideological appeal have lagged far behind the military component of the “war on terror.”

Particular evidence of this can be found just a click away. The web provides terrorist leaders with a medium to broadcast their message to a global audience with virtual impunity.......

Fears of a “digital Pearl Harbor”—a cyberattack against critical infrastructure—have so preoccupied Western governments that they have neglected to recognize that terrorists actually use the Internet as a tool for organizing, recruiting, and fundraising.

Their online activities offer a window onto their methods, ideas, and plans.

The United States is gradually losing the online war against terrorists. Rather than aggressively pursuing its enemies, the U.S. government has adopted a largely defensive strategy, the centerpiece of which is an electronic Maginot Line that supposedly protects critical infrastructure (for example, the computer systems run by agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration) against online attacks. In the meantime, terrorists and their sympathizers, unhindered by bureaucratic inertia and unchallenged by Western governments, have reorganized their operations to take advantage of the Internet’s more prosaic properties.
Read it-Foreign Affairs

Nowadays falsehood stands erect and truth lies prostrate on the ground.