If you were a jihadist, you'd be rich by now

These two headlines caught my attention this morning.

 

At the end of February 2009, I asked the question, "Is Obama aiding and abetting ECONOMIC JIHAD against America?"  Nineteen months later I still have no answer, and in fact have been unable to interest anyone in the question.

The first point I raised in that post came from a MEMRI Special Dispatch, dated June 16, 2008: "Mujahideen Monitor U.S. Economy, Attempt to Undermine Dollar."

Numerous postings on Islamist websites in the past two years reflect the mujahideen's growing interest in the state of the U.S. economy. As was argued in a 2007 MEMRI analysis, [1] many of the jihadists and their supporters have come to view their struggle against the U.S. and the West as an economic war. More specifically, they have come to the conclusion that it is financial, rather than military, losses that will prompt the U.S. to change its policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. Consequently, they emphasize the importance of targeting U.S. interests around the world, and of directing their military jihad primarily at targets that affect the U.S. economy.

The mujahideen's growing interest in undermining U.S. economy is reflected, for example, in an article in the 26th issue of the GIMF's e-magazine Sada Al-Jihad (Echo of Jihad), recently posted on Al-Hesbah and on other Islamist websites. [2] The article, titled "Why the Dollar Collapsed and How America Controls the Price of Oil," discusses the factors that contributed to the devaluation of the dollar in recent years.

The author lists among the key factors the economic damage caused by Hurricane Katrina; the losses caused by the September 11 attacks; the cost of the war on terror and of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the U.S.'s persistent trade deficit and growing government debt; investors' growing faith in the Euro; the recent subprime crisis in the U.S.; and the fact that financial institutions around the world have started to reduce their dollar reserves, thereby flooding the market with dollars and decreasing the demand for this currency.

The author ends his analysis with the following threat: "The dollar can expect two additional blows that will break its back... [namely] the announcement of the return of the Caliphate..." and the reinstatement of the gold standard in international monetary trade.

"Get Rid of [Your] American Dollars... and Buy Gold"

A recent posting on the Al-Ikhlas forum urges the mujahideen and their supporters to sell their dollars, if they have any, because Al-Qaeda is planning a strike inside the U.S. so that it will undermine the American economy: "[I advise you] to get rid of [your] American dollars... and buy gold instead... or real estate. The next attack inside the U.S. is imminent... Zawahiri will convey his instructions [regarding this attack] in his next [message]... This attack will put an end to the so-called United States of America and destroy its economy completely... The day of the attack is very near..." [3]

Given that it is highly atypical for Al-Qaeda to give prior warning of its attacks, the message is probably an attempt to pressure Muslims to sell dollars, in order to generate pessimism in the dollar market and thus accelerate the drop in its value.

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[1]See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 387 "The Battle... Is Economic Rather than Military" - An Economically Oriented Concept of Jihad Emerges in Islamist Discourse," September 11, 2007, http://memriiwmp.org/content/en/report.htm?report=2371.

[2]http://www.myhesbah.net/v/showthread.php?t=182568.

[3]http://www.ek-ls.org/forum/showthread.php?t=152815.

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Given today's headlines, I am now even more curious to know if the dots I was pointing out 19 mos. ago can be connected or not, even tentatively.  In brief, my thinking then was constructed along the following timeline:

June 16, 2008  We hear from MEMRI about the mujahideen's "growing interest" in the state of the our economy.

Early September 2008 McCain is leading Obama in the polls by 3-5 points.

Sept. 15, 2008 - almost 16 years to the day since George Soros "broke the Bank of England" - the Federal Reserve notices a "tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the U.S. to the tune of $550 billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two."

Had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawn and the entire economy of the United States would have collapsed, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

[See especially the video of Rep. Paul Kanjorski (PA), explaining later what Congress had been told by Paulson and Bernanke in a closed door session... that shocked them into supporting the first - $700 billion - bailout.]

September 25, 2008 - ten days after the near-collapse of the world economy. On nothing less than the front page of the Washington Post, we learn that

-- "Some foreign investors who had previously (i.e., normally) provided crucial injections of capital remained on the sidelines."  

-- And more specifically: "the sovereign wealth funds of Asian and oil-rich Middle Eastern nations, which have come to the rescue of U.S. firms before...showed little interest in taking a similar gamble [again now]." 

At this juncture, I noted -chapter, verse and link- that "boycotting" an enemy's commodities is one of the "ways" of jihad.  Does this apply to the Washington Post report?  I have no idea; I barely even know what a commodity is.  But it might apply, and if it does, what does that mean? 

More follows along these same lines, on October 1, 2008, when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) says on the Mark Levin radio show:

"... this is just my theory, so I’m not passing around as fact—but I think China and Saudi Arabia are holding a lot of these securitized mortgages. And I think they’ve basically said they’re not going to loan us any more money until we buy them back. And if they don’t give us loans every day, we default on our loans [because] we have so much debt as a nation. So, we’re going to borrow more money to try to make this situation right. There’s nothing else for me, Mark, that explains the urgency in using a sledgehammer to fix something that most of us know a few screwdrivers could fix.”

Then on November 4th, as we all know, Barack Obama is elected to the presidency... in spite of the facts that he

• prevented public scrutiny of virtually all documentation of his past;
• may or may not be constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural-born" American citizen;
• recited the Islamic call to prayer "with a first rate accent" to a New York Times columnist and described it as "the most beautiful sound on Earth at sunset"
• is conceivably indebted to the Saudi royal family (as per former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, also former attorney for the Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X)... and
• "would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees" based on his ties to Islamists and to the Nation of Islam.

 

So here we are, nineteen months after my original post, and we only know one thing for certain: if you were a jihadist who listened to the instructions of your superiors back in the summer of '08, if got rid of your American dollars and bought gold instead, then you would have done very well for yourself.

Meanwhile, Daryl Guppy noted just yesterday at CNBC that the U.S. Dollar Index could fall to $0.77 ... He believes that "the dollar will continue to struggle in the months ahead." 

Uh-huh.

So if somebody, anybody, can put the kabash on my timeline and tell me how very wrong I am to think that all these dots might connect, I would appreciate that more than I can say.  My fear is not simply that we are going broke as our enemies profit, but that We The People are quite in the dark... about a number of things.

Comments

[Kae Gregory]

I read several blogs, and like most people I suppose, I gravitate to them because they reflect at least some of my sentiment. But with politics moving in what I feel, is a positive direction, most of the other blogs and frankly, the news in general, has become single issue and myopic. Not here. This is, again in my opinion, a profoundly important post that should be widely read. I hope that it is. Great job! (and Chag Sameach)

[Mannie Sherberg]

Thanks, Yael, for a post that's -- as usual -- both thoughtful and sobering. Sure, there's no categorical proof that the jihadists are sabotaging the U.S. econoomy -- but one would have to be more naive than Little Mary Sunshine to think otherwise. We've been warned for years that the jihad is not always -- or even usually -- a violent affair. It is, perhaps more than anything else, a matter of stealth -- in which surreptitious tactics do most of the damage. The jihadists long ago adopted -- or maybe they originated -- Malcolm X's slogan of "By any means necessary." They'd have to be nuts or stupid -- and they're neither -- not to know that financial finagling is necessary to bring America down. Our current economic plight is only partially "structural"; it's been aggravated by tricksters and sharpers from outside the system. And I'd be willing to bet that most of those tricksters and sharpers have addresses in the Middle East.

[Yael]

Even though I would rather have seen Kae and Mannie show me how and where I'm wrong, I do appreciate your affirmations. The thing I find so astounding is that two years after an "economic collapse" of such magnitude, no one (that I know of) is asking or answering questions about how it started on that September morning (what is it about September?). One would think that somewhere in our government, a team of bureaucrats would have discerned by now who exactly withdrew TRILLIONS of dollars from the economy, all of sudden, as if on cue. The fact that we haven't heard any kind of official report makes me wonder if the answers aren't being purposely withheld for fear of starting a panic.

[Mannie Sherberg]

Yael -- if you're right -- and you probably are -- that something fishy is going on here and hasn't been investigated for fear of panicking the American people, that's a pretty terrifying indictment of our government. No doubt every administration withholds certain information from the people, and no doubt members of the government always go to their graves knowing some things you and I should know but never will. But if there's been financial skullduggery of the kind you suggest, that's something the people need to know, since it's their livelihood and that of their children and grandchildren that's being affected. The American people are by and large a bunch of grownups who can handle the truth without overreacting. But our paternalistic government doesn't believe that. When it comes to things that really matter, the nanny state always treats the citizenry as infantile and irresponsible. We are being governed by people afflicted with overweening hubris, and it may be that hubris -- not the viciousness of the jihadists -- that, in the end, brings down our precious country.

[essay]

Hard work, perseverance and discipline they use armor in the fight against poverty and become successful professionals.