Connecting the terrorist dots of 2009
They show that Al Qaeda does not have a political strategy for establishing an Islamic state.
Florence, Italy
What do the terrorists who attempted to strike US territory in 2009 have in common? What is their connection with the Arab Middle East, often presented as the cradle of Islamic radicalization.
The answer seems to be very little.
What ties together Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born, British-educated, trained-in-Yemen man charged in the failed Christmas Day plane bombing; Anwar al-Awlaki, the fierce radical Islamic preacher who, in fact, holds a degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University instead of a master’s in divinity from an Arab theological school; and Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist of Palestinian descent charged in the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas?
To understand, we have to consider lesser-known activists, like Daniel Patrick Boyd, a white US citizen and convert to Islam accused of leading a jihadist group in North Carolina, and Bryant Neal Vinas, an Hispanic US citizen from Long Island, N.Y., who pleaded guilty last year to assisting Al Qaeda and other terrorism-related charges.
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