Watching the Watchers

[Valin]

Foreign Policy:

Al Qaeda's bold new strategy is all about using our own words and actions against us. And it's working.
JARRET BRACHMAN
NOVEMBER 2010

On July 21, the U.S. Justice Department indicted Zachary Adam Chesser on charges that he twice tried to join al-Shabab, the fast-growing Somali terrorist group that has become a close ally of al Qaeda. On October 20, he pleaded guilty to three counts of providing material support to terrorists, communicating threats, and soliciting crimes of violence: He faces upwards of 20 years in jail. Chesser, a 20-year-old Virginian turned radical convert to Islam better known by his Internet sobriquet Abu Talhah al-Amrikee, had become a minor online celebrity in April when he issued a threat against Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the cartoon series South Park. Parker and Stone, Chesser warned, would probably be killed after airing an episode depicting the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume.

It is tempting to dismiss Chesser as just another suburban white kid lashing out at the world. But his story is not the irrelevant absurdity it appeared, not merely another terrorist folly like exploding underpants and the undetonated bomb in Times Square. Chesser, in fact, was the real thing: a significant al Qaeda propagandist for a new moment, South Park fatwa and all. In less than two years, under various identities, Chesser had promoted an extensive collection of radical papers, videos, and blog posts to an astonishing array of online outlets, from the hardest-core al Qaeda discussion forums to mainstream Islamic websites to social-networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. He even recorded his own jihadi war tunes.

I know all this because I stumbled upon Chesser five months before his arrest: We became improbable pen pals. I first met Chesser virtually, after he posted a comment to my al Qaeda-monitoring blog correcting what he believed to be a mistake I had made. He was bothered by my depiction of his hero, Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Yemeni cleric who has been tied to a growing number of terrorist plots in the United States. I dismissed that post and Chesser's next one as the usual splenetics of a low-level al Qaeda supporter. It was not until his third post to my website in mid-March, commenting on rifts he saw within the U.S. counterterrorism community, that I suspected "Abu Talhah al-Amrikee" might be different from my typical jihadi critic. Out of curiosity, I emailed him -- and surprisingly, he responded. From there we became what you might call hostile friends, sparring over a wide array of topics, including U.S. domestic politics, recent terrorist plots, al Qaeda personalities, and even my own counterterrorism colleagues. We had been discussing the possibility of holding an in-person, public debate just before his arrest.

(Snip)

FYI
JarretBrachman.net


Leaderless Jihad