The article discusses a possible shift from civilian to military targets. While hardened military targets are difficult to attack, there is none the less a debate within jihadist circles to to shift away from attacking much more exposed civilian targets like subways, mall and hotels to attacks against the military.
This change in strategy, coupled with the move away from IEDs to small arm attacks, would mean that these attacks would likely be against recruiting stations and troops in transit. It is too early to tell if there really is a shift in strategy, but there are indications that it is being hotly debated.
For the article's Hot Stratfor Babe, since soldiers are the targets and it may be a future trend, I decided to look to future female soldiers as the pool to choose the Hot Stratfor Babe from. After my usual in-depth search I selected Jolene Blalock, who played the insect battling pilot, Captain Lola Beck in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.
I've never seen the film. While I thought the first Starship Troopers movie was OK, a lot of people hated it with a burning passion. Regardless, Marauder is the third film in the series and so I'm guessing, based on the general geometric decline in quality sequels suffer from, that it isn't a very good movie.
After the article I've included a clip from Starship Troopers 3: Marauder where they discuss Bug Religion. I must say, as a fan of B Movies, the ridiculous dialog about Bug Gods appealed to me. I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for this movie showing up on TV.
THE SEATTLE PLOT: JIHADISTS SHIFTING AWAY FROM CIVILIAN TARGETS?
By Scott Stewart, June 30, 2011
On June 22 in a Seattle warehouse, Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif pulled an unloaded M16 rifle to his shoulder, aimed it, and pulled the trigger repeatedly as he imagined himself gunning down young U.S. military recruits. His longtime friend Walli Mujahidh did likewise with an identical rifle, assuming a kneeling position as he engaged his notional targets. The two men had come to the warehouse with another man to inspect the firearms the latter had purchased with money Abdul-Latif had provided him. The rifles and a small number of hand grenades were to be used in an upcoming mission: an attack on a U.S. Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in an industrial area south of downtown Seattle.
After confirming that the rifles were capable of automatic fire and discussing the capacity of the magazines they had purchased, the men placed the rifles back into a storage bag intending to transport them to a temporary cache location. As they prepared to leave the warehouse, they were suddenly swarmed by a large number of FBI agents and other law enforcement officers and quickly arrested. Their plan to conduct a terrorist attack inside the United States had been discovered when the man they had invited to join their plot (the man who had allegedly purchased the weapons for them) reported the plot to the Seattle Police Department, which in turn reported it to the FBI. According to the federal criminal complaint filed in the case, the third unidentified man had an extensive criminal record and had known Abdul-Latif for several years, but he had not been willing to undertake such a terrorist attack.
While the behavior of Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh in this plot demonstrates that they were amateur "wannabe" jihadists rather than seasoned terrorist operatives, their plot could have ended very differently if they had found a kindred spirit in the man they approached for help instead of someone who turned them into the authorities. This case also illustrates some important trends in jihadist terrorism that we have been watching for the past few years as well as a possible shift in mindset within the jihadist movement.
Trends
First, Abu-Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh, both American converts to Islam, are prime examples of what we refer to as grassroots jihadists. They are individuals who were inspired by the al Qaeda movement but who had no known connection to the al Qaeda core or one of its franchise groups. In late 2009, in response to the success of the U.S. government and its allies in preventing jihadist attacks in the West, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) began a campaign to encourage jihadists living in the West to conduct simple attacks using readily available items, rather than travel abroad for military and terrorism training with jihadist groups. After successes such as the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, this theme of encouraging grassroots attacks was adopted by the core al Qaeda group.
While the grassroots approach does present a challenge to law enforcement and intelligence agencies in that attackers can seemingly appear out of nowhere with no prior warning, the paradox presented by grassroots operatives is that they are also far less skilled than trained terrorist operatives. In other words, while they are hard to detect, they frequently lack the skill to conduct large, complex attacks and frequently make mistakes that expose them to detection in smaller plots.
And that is what we saw in the Seattle plot. Abdul-Latif had originally wanted to hit U.S. Joint Base Lewis-McChord (formerly known as Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base), which is located some 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Seattle, but later decided against that plan since he considered the military base to be too hardened a target. While Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh were amateurs, they seem to have reached a reasonable assessment of their own abilities and which targets were beyond their abilities to strike. [continued after jump]
