“The key to undermining American power is raw violence, the more shocking the better”

From “The Management of Savagery”.

Published in 2004 by a jihadist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji, the book posits a world in which the superpower halo of the United States has disappeared and the Muslim world within the colonial boundaries known as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement has descended into chaos — “savagery,” as the author bluntly puts it.

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The money section:

The manifesto proposes that the jihadists draw an overstretched America into a war in which it will eventually become “exhausted” and give up. This strategy requires polarizing the Muslim world and convincing those moderates who had hoped for U.S. protection that it’s futile.

Naji argues that if the United States overextends itself militarily, this will lead to its demise. “The overwhelming military power (weapons, technology, fighters) has no value without … the cohesion of (society’s) institutions and sectors.” Loss of America’s media reputation as an all-dominating superpower “removes the aura of invincibility which this power projects, [and reveals] that nothing at all stands in front of it.”

Naji’s war plan was written in the aftermath of America’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. His theme was the need to draw the United States even deeper into conflict across Muslim lands.

The author’s premise was that the United States was a paper tiger that would become fatigued by a long war in Muslim countries and by social problems back home: “Work to expose the weakness of America’s centralized power by pushing it to abandon the media psychological war and the war by proxy until it fights directly.”

The key to undermining American power is raw violence, the more shocking the better, he argues. It wasn’t just that this ultra-violence would expose the West’s feebleness but also that it would force Muslims to make a choice. In the disorder of formerly stable Arab lands, the jihadists would make their name through “management of savagery.” Naji even urged his readers to consult books on business administration.

Note the theory of Hassan Abbassi strategy planner for Iran, circa 2005:

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of “the last helicopter.”

It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers.

Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the bodies of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein’s generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton’s helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an “aberration,” a leader out of sync with his nation’s character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an “American Middle East.”

Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as “waiting Bush out.” “We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies,” says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran’s new Foreign Minister.

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