Reply #7: Making Americans afraid of money would jibe with the AQ playbook [View All]

[Dunvegan]

The US economy is bin Laden's number one target.

What if every American was afraid to actually handle or even touch money. Could cause a problem greater than suicide bombings.

We're still on the AQ "bin Laden speech" clock...usually something hits within three months of a speech. Could be nothing. Could be crazy college chemists. Could be a warning shot if any more is found.

Wonder if they're checking the place the roll of quarters was purchased from?

Al Qaeda's economic war against the United States

Although battlefield victories are crucial, history shows that global wars have been decided on a different kind of front: the war between economic powers. World War II soldiers clashed on the beaches of Normandy and Guadalcanal, but only when the German and Japanese war industries ran out of cash and raw materials did the wheels of the Whehrmacht and the Imperial Army finally grind to a halt. The Cold War could have gone on for decades if not for the depletion of the Kremlin's coffers.

The war on radical Islam is no different. Osama bin Laden plans strategies based on his victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Feasibility aside, he believes the way to bring down a superpower is to weaken its economy through protracted guerilla warfare. We "bled Russia for ten years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden boasted in his October 2004 videotape.

The October video, released just before the U.S. election, offers a glimpse into the jihadist strategy. "We are continuing in the same policy to make America bleed profusely to the point of bankruptcy," said bin Laden. His logic is simple: To bring the U.S. to suffer a fate similar to that of the Soviet Union, the terrorists need to drain America's resources and bring it to the point it can no longer afford to preserve its military and economic dominance. As the U.S. loses standing in the Middle East, the jihadists can gain ground and remove from power regimes they view as corrupt and illegitimate while defeating other infidels who inhabit the land of Islam.