I wanted to end the year on a note of peace, love and goodwill to all men
[and women and gender-fluid persons. Ed.] but those things are in short supply, it seems. All over Europe, New Year's Eve celebrations are being scaled down or cancelled altogether for fear of Paris-style attacks by Islamic extremists. Inspectors Knacker, Poirot and Clouseau are busily rounding up the usual -- read: Muslim -- suspects, as the "Christian" West cowers in fear.
As well we might. In 2005, Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein published
Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of Al Qaeda, in which he lays out, in Arabic, Al-Qaeda's grand strategy, a seven-phase, 20-year plan to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate.
Here, in Glenn Beck's précis
* [with slight edits], is how it works. As you read this, keep in mind that Mr. Beck wrote this in 2007,
before anyone had heard of ISIS!
Phase One: "The Awakening" - Wake up Muslims around the world, by provoking the United States to attack the Islamic world. 9/11, with its resulting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a pretty good start for this phase. Hussein wrote that Al-Qaeda considered 9/11 to be "very successful" and believes that its message is now being heard "everywhere".
Phase Two: "Opening Eyes" - The idea is to turn the Islamic community into a "movement" by recruiting young men and making Iraq the central base of operations. Progressing well.
Phase Three: "Arising and Standing Up" - Attacks on Syria, Turkey, Israel and possibly Jordan highlight this stage, which is hoped to make Al-Qaeda "a more recognized organization". Also well under way except that Al-Qaeda has been supplanted by ISIS.
Phase Four: "Take Over" - With many Middle East countries facing terrorist attacks, Al-Qaeda's hope is to begin collapsing the governments of hated Arabic countries. Simultaneously, terrorists intend to attack oil infrastructure and suppliers and cripple the U.S. economy through cyber-terrorism. Moving along nicely.
Phase Five: "Caliphate" - With weakened or toppled governments and a decreased willingness of Western governments to intervene -- hello, President 0 -- an Islamic state can be created to bring about "a new world order". Yes, 10 years ago Mr. Hussein predicted the rise of the "Islamic state". Et voilà!
Phase Six: "Total Confrontation" - A "fight between the believers and the non-believers" will be initiated by the new Islamic army -- read: jihadists. Attacks on schools [Mr. Beck predicted in 2007] would "turn us into a nation of irrational nut-jobs, who would do insane things like torch mosques, and that's exactly what they want. That too has come to pass.
Phase Seven: "Definitive Victory" - With "one and a half billion Muslims" fighting, the Islamic army will defeat all others within two years, and the caliphate will stand.
The only thing Mr. Hussein missed, as Walt sees it, is that the jihadists adopted a more practical "stealth" variation of Phase Six. Why raise an army -- although they're certainly recruiting lots of "radicalized Muslims" in our prisons and on the Internet -- when you infiltrate thousands, even millions of Islamists into western countries disguised as "refugees". Three jumbo-jetloads of them will arrive in Canada this evening. From the ghettos of Toronto and Montréal, it's only a short hop across the border to the outlet malls of New York. Don't say you weren't warned!
* Footnote and book recommendation: I got the précis above from
Glenn Beck's An Inconvenient Book (Simon & Schuster, 2007), which I recommend. Some might say that
An Inconvenient Book was authored by a non-writer for non-readers. It does appear to have been designed for TV viewers, people who like lots of graphics and colour. But it's a quick and easy read, and there's some good stuff in there, including
Mr. Beck's 4-phase plan for preventing the Islamists from taking over.
