Word: binning
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...long-term aim of the 9/11 attacks was, in the rhetoric of bin Laden's own supporters, to "divide the world between the faithful and the infidels." The attacks would show prospective jihadists that the U.S. could be bloodied at the very heart of its power, and that this would help convince millions of Muslim youth that by turning to arms, they could defeat the Americans and their local allies throughout the Arab and Muslim world. They also expected that the attacks - and the inevitable U.S. military action they would provoke - would create a crisis...
...Muslim world, turning it against America and those that would work with America. Where President Bush responded with the warning that "you're either with us or against us," al-Qaeda calculated that the Muslim masses, unlike their governments, would turn away from the U.S. The fundamental battle for Bin Laden's movement, therefore, was for the hearts and minds of the Muslim faithful...
...whereas a very small proportion of Muslims worldwide identified with al-Qaeda's actions, a substantially larger proportion agreed with bin Laden's indictment of the U.S. as an enemy of Muslim interests - U.S. support for Israel's actions against the Palestinians, the impact of a decade of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis and the presence of its troops in Saudi Arabia certainly provided a fertile propaganda for bin Laden's movement. And, if anything, the actions of the U.S. in the course of the administration's "war on terror" have substantially increased both groups - those willing to support or engage...
...spurious, they may nonetheless have created a self-fulfilling prophesy. Arab and Muslim outrage at the U.S. occupation of Iraq has created a new organizing principle for al-Qaeda, whose spokesmen now urge their followers worldwide to make their way to Iraq to wage jihad against the invaders. For bin Laden's followers, the growing insurgency in Iraq is more than simply a golden opportunity to spill their enemy's blood on a battlefield more accessible than most; it's an opportunity to lay the foundation for the next generation of al-Qaeda in the way that the Afghan jihad...
...Still, no matter how bogged down the U.S. may be in Iraq, and the fact that hundreds of jihadis are believed to have sneaked across its borders, al-Qaeda can't claim victories there - most of the Iraqi resistance is entirely homegrown. Bin Laden's network has lost many key operatives and its sanctuaries, its structures and finances have been disrupted, and none of the Arab regimes it aims to topple have fallen. Still, the fact that the trend in the Arab and Muslim world over the past two years is to turn away from the U.S. rather than move...