Seeing al-Qaida Behind Every Tree
January 21, 2014 12:05 am • Dana Milbank Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Warning: Al-Qaida may be seeking franchise opportunities at a location near you.
Osama bin Laden has been dead for almost three years, but people seem to be spotting his terrorist organization everywhere. Al-Qaida in Iraq just took Fallujah. Republican leaders remain convinced that al-Qaida attacked us in Libya. A September report from the conservative American Enterprise Institute finds no fewer than 20 al-Qaida entities, affiliates and associate organizations — and that doesn’t include “associated movements within the al-Qaida network.”
These guys must have more franchisees than Chick-fil-A.
With all this talk of al-Qaida expanding like so many Jihadi Juice stands, Americans could be forgiven for thinking bin Laden mini-me’s are running around Yemen, Syria, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and in much of Africa and the Near East. But are they really?
It appears primarily to be a case of label proliferation — much like in the Cold War, when Americans began to see Soviet-style communists throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas. This caused confusion over which enemy was worth fighting. Now there are lots of groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida, and the actual al-Qaida, in dire straits, is happy to recognize sympathetic organizations. American neoconservatives, meanwhile, know that tying a foe to al-Qaida helps to undermine the Obama administration and to maintain support for a robust military response.
