Time Immortal

In the wake of the London bombings, the British police have done wonders to investigate the attacks, and have even made a few arrests in the process. Thus far, they have identified about 30 suspects with al-Qaeda links. A backlash is also underway, though not against Muslims, as was feared by some. It is instead a backlash against London mayor Ken Livingstone, for his continued support of the radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has publically endorsed terrorist bombers. He also publishes the occasional fatwa, which you can sometimes find on the IslamOnline website.

Mark Steyn has recently been on about dirty nukes, truly horrific weapons of mass destruction which, in addition to causing low-range kiloton-range damage against a target, spew increased volumes of very radioactive material over a wider raduis. These bombs are brutal weapons of mayhem with one purpose…limit the damage to structures, and instead kill the inhabitants with astronomical levels of radiation.

In particular, you can find the discussion in his Mailbox, and in specific as a response to one letter, cited below:

SECURITY RESTRAINED THEIR FIREPOWER
The inestimable Mr Steyn: “In other words, the scale of the carnage was constrained only by the murderers’ ambition and their manpower.”

I hesitate to disagree with someone whose thought I so respect, and whose command of language so far exceeds my own, but the carnage was also constrained by the murderers’ firepower, which has been downgraded from commercial airliners to backpacks as a result of stepped-up security. This is not an insignificant improvement.

Meyer Shields

MARK REPLIES: That’s correct in a sense. But what happens when it’s a dirty nuke in the backpack?

He’s also talked about portable nukes in one of his recent columns for the New York Sun. Again, the relevant passage is cited below:

Meanwhile, across the borders pour not primarily suicide bombers or suitcase nukes, though they will come in the end, but ideology — fierce, glamorous and implacable. That’s the final irony of the Israelification of Europe: distressing as it may be to Continental anti-Semites, in this scenario they’re the Jews.

At first, I was willing to put this down to Mr. Steyn’s usual talent for hyperbole and conjecture, but it appears that now it’s becoming something else. Say what you like about al-Qaeda, but they usually follow-through on the threats they make. One of the suspects in the London Bombings — Abu Musam al-Suri — recently was the subject of a Global Terror Alert, in which he asserts:

“I was honored to participate in the Afghani jihad against the Russians and the communists until we exterminated their forces and lowered their flanks and made an example out of them — as we will also do with America, with the help of Allah…I was honored to become acquainted with Shaykh Abdullah Azzam, and I worked with him during the days of the Afghani jihad in 1987. Then in 1988, I was honored by coming to know Shaykh Usama [bin Laden]…I was honored to become a member of Al-Qaida, and I worked with the group until 1992. During that time, I trained its first elite fighters and I was an instructor at its camps and other Arab-Afghan camps in various military and organizational methodologies, especially given my own high degree of specialized training in explosives production, special operations, and guerilla warfare that I received in Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. All praise be to Allah for his blessing.“

A short while later in the article, he is again quoted:

“I emphasize my complete denial of what was reported in the American media and uttered by American official that I had any connection to or prior knowledge of the glorious and heroic September 2001 attacks. I only heard about it through the media, and I — along with many millions of other Muslims — enjoyed watching the beginning of the collapse of America. May Allah reward those who carried out [the attacks] with the best of rewards [martyrdom].“

The thing is, we can probably take him at his word about his non-involvement…and this is the tie-in between this report and Mark Steyn’s invocation of the spectre of dirty nukes. In an internet posting back in December 2004, al-Suri asserted that:

“…if I had been consulted about [the September 11] operation, I would have advised them to select aircraft on international flights and to have put weapons of mass destruction aboard them… now that the American administration has revealed the evil and wickedness of its forces… it is not a far cry from justice to adopt the slogan, ‘Dirty Bombs for a Dirty Nation’… Let the American people—those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations’ wealth, megalomania, and the desire to control others—be contaminated with radiation!“

As I said before, you can say what you like about the jihadi, but they usually make good on threats. It seems clearer and clearer now that in my lifetime, I will hear news of a backpack nuke going off in a major urban centre somewhere, probably in America. But really, it could be anywhere, because this is the ‘war’ that al-Qaeda is fighting. They are not waging a war of protest, or fighting so that America or any other Western nation will give them land or other concessions. They are fighting to kill the indifel.

We are all of us infidels to them.