Yes, Al Qaeda Is Really That Stupid

Michael Ledeen:

Did you really expect high-I.Q. martyrs? Maybe clever killers, but somebody should have pointed out — long since — that it isn’t very smart to blow yourself up. And for the most part, the martyrs haven’t come from the best-educated sectors of the population. But so many scribblers have been impressed by the deep faith of the suiciders, that they’ve shied away from this fairly obvious point. And one could go further. Indeed one should go further: All those parents and siblings who speak with reverence of their exploded child or brother or sister or cousin or uncle, they should be ashamed of themselves. Because they’re fools.

And their leaders, who play them for fools, know it and delight in that knowledge. No terrorist leader has ever blown himself up. No way, that’s not their job. Their job is to get other people to blow themselves up. The leader sends them to die, and pays off the family, having done whatever it takes to convince the martyr-to-be to go through with it. Which isn’t always so easy, by the way. There are abundant stories about martyrs taking drugs before and during the Great Day of the Virgin Orgy. There are slightly less-abundant stories about martyrs having been chained to their car bombs, and there are plenty of stories from Iraq — broadcast throughout the Middle East, but so far as I know not over here — about jihadis ordered to drive explosives-laden vehicles to point X, having been assured it’s perfectly safe, only to have the thing blow up before they leave. They were scheduled to have been martyred by their leaders — the smart guys — and their families back home in Saudi or Yemen or North Africa were told that they sacrificed themselves for The Cause. Unfortunately for the template, some of them survived and bitterly told their stories. And remember that several — perhaps most — of the 9/11 terrorists were not told that day would be their last.

My Iranian friends delight in these operations, which they see as a double delight: some of our guys get killed, mayhem is visited upon our allies in Iraq or Afghanistan or India, etc., and it’s all done by some stupid Arab (the mullahs have a dim view of Arabs). You may have noticed that there haven’t been many Iranian martyrs in Iraq. Yes, there have been martyr recruitment campaigns around Iran, and tens of thousands have signed up, but the “volunteers” are unlikely to have volunteered, and so far as I know they haven’t shown up to challenge the surge. Accounts of Iranian martyrs in the war against us are just not there. Debka claims that “contingents of Revolutionary Guards Corps of suicide fighters” have been deployed to southern Iraq. I don’t believe it (I rarely believe Debka). The IRGC forces kill others, not themselves. The British press was almost certainly more accurate when they reported that Iranian helicopters had carried terrorists into southern Iraq. No surprise there.

Which takes me back to the British terrorists. You may recall that the last time around (some date with a “7” in it, wasn’t it?), there were explosives that failed to detonate, terrorists who hightailed it away from their mission, and cars were found with explosives in them. Just like now. It’s not rare; it’s quite common. If you ask our military guys in Iraq how this compares with their experience, they’ll tell you that plenty of IEDs fail to go off, and that suicide belts often misfunction. Sometimes the martyr-to-be has (second? first?) thoughts and runs off.

The theory that “it couldn’t have been al Qaeda and Iran because they’re too smart for this sort of buffoonery” doesn’t stand up. Al Qaeda is not the SAS, their fighters wouldn’t pass the physical, and they’d probably be rejected on the grounds that they’re not very good at thinking clearly under pressure and can’t adapt to changing circumstances. And as for Iran, there seems to be a shortage of high I.Q. atop the mullahcracy, doesn’t there? Only a totally incompetent leadership could have so thoroughly wrecked the country. Gasoline shortages in a country with all that petroleum? Breathtaking stupidity. The suicide terrorists’ competitive advantages to date have been basically two: there’s lots of them, so even if many of them fail, a few succeed and kill lots of people. Second, they’ve got a great theme song, and their brand has sold well.

There likewise shouldn't be any surprise to see professionals among the terrorist cell leadership. We've known for decades that terrorist leaders are drawn overwhelmingly from the middle and upper classes; our gullible media invariably is surprised by this since they've swallowed the poverty grievance nonsense these well-manicured murderers have fed them hook, line, and sinker.