Jihad Psychopath: How He Is Charming, Seducing, And Devouring Us

Joshua Sinai offers a good review in the Washington Times of Jamie Glazov’s Jihadist Psychopath: How He is Charming, Seducing, and Devouring Us 

This is an interesting, original and important account of how Islamist supremacism’s onslaught against the West, including the United States, employs a psychopath’s nefarious and deceptive strategies and tactics to “devour” Western civilization — just as an individual psychopath would hunt and swindle his unsuspecting and naive prey.


As Michael Ledeen writes in the book’s foreword, it is through such a deceptive psychological approach that jihadist militants “have managed to convince their intended victims that the religious/political war [between the Muslim world and the West] is the fault of the West, and that our best strategy is surrender.”

The author, the editor of Frontpage magazine, is well-positioned to analyze these issues, as it reports on how these threats manifest themselves in Western societies.

What are the psychopath’s nefarious methods? Citing Martha Stout, an author of an authoritative book on the psychology of psychopaths, this consists of “playing the pity card to get people to give him what he wants, which, primarily, means getting the[ir targets] to give him complete power over their lives.”

What makes the psychopath so dangerous is that “he never takes responsibility for any of his actions and, most importantly, that he never says he is sorry. He perpetually poses as the unappreciated martyr and displays unending moral indignation about where he was wronged — a charge that comes accompanied by his eternal (and groundless) accusations against the victim.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/1/book-review-jihadist-psychopath-by-jamie-glazov/

Nine Lives: My Time As The West's Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda

Joshua Sinai offers a good review in the Washington Times of Aimen Dean’s Nine Lives: My Times as the West’s Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda

This is a dramatic account by a young Muslim from Saudi Arabia who had become so radicalized into Islamist extremism that he decided in 1994 (at the age 16) to travel to Bosnia and join a group of al Qaeda-affiliated foreign fighters who were fighting on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims against their adversary Croatian and Serbian Christian militias.

What makes this account so interesting and important (and how it became a CNN documentary) is that Bosnia was the first of many jihadi battlegrounds in Asia and the Middle East that Aimen Dean (a pseudonym) was involved as a fighter and a member of an elite bomb-making team (including attempting to build a chemical weapon) during al Qaeda’s formative pre-9/11 period in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

It was there where he interacted with a “Who’s Who” of its top operatives, including Osama bin Laden (to whom he pledged personal allegiance), Khaled Sheikh Muhammad (9/11’s mastermind), Abu Zubaydah (the group’s logistical manager) and Abu Khabab (the group’s top bomb-maker).

Even more compelling, eventually, in 1998, Mr. Dean became so disillusioned with al Qaeda’s mass killings of innocent victims in the August 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and elsewhere, which were part of what he considered its hypocritical ideology and self-destructive warfare and political strategy, that he defected and became a double agent on behalf of MI6, the British intelligence service.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/25/book-review-nine-lives-by-aimen-dean-with-paul-cru/ 

Directorate S: The C.I.A. And America's Secret Wars In Afghanistan And Pakistan

Joshua Sinai at the Washington Times offers a review of Steve Coll’s Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

With the appointments of John Bolton as the National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as the secretary of State, the Trump administration is likely to embark on a major review of the policies and programs guiding the 16-year U.S. political and military involvement in Afghanistan.

They will also examine the extent to which the Pakistani government is cooperating with the U.S. in countering these insurgents, or whether it is playing a double game by shielding the Pakistani Taliban, as well as providing a safe haven to the remnants of al Qaeda, especially to Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor, somewhere in Pakistan.

How these strategic and military challenges will likely play out and the historical background that has shaped them since the beginning of the American intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001, are central to Steve Coll’s important book, “Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

This book is the second volume and update of the author’s best-selling “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001,” published in 2004.

This book, according to Mr. Coll, seeks to provide a “history of how the C.I.A., I.S.I. [the Pakistani intelligence service], and the Afghan intelligence agencies influenced the rise of a new war in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban [in late 2001], and how that war fostered a revival of al Qaeda, allied terrorist networks, and, eventually branches of the Islamic State. The book also seeks to connect American, Afghan, Pakistani, and international policy failures to the worldwide persistence of jihadi terrorism.”

What is remarkable about this book is Mr. Coll’s recounting of numerous behind-the-scenes meetings and memos by high level Bush and Obama administration officials and their Pakistani and Afghanistan government counterparts, as each side attempted to press its case to manage and, if possible, resolve, the difficult and problematic political and military situation in Afghanistan.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/2/book-review-directorate-s-by-steve-coll/ 

The Future Of War: A History

Joshua Sinai offers a review of Lawrence Freedman’s The Future of War: A History at the Washington Times.

The nature of warfare is constantly changing and evolving. New technologies such as unmanned systems, whether militarized aerial drones, remote-controlled robotic tanks or sophisticated cyber weapons that can remotely destroy an adversary’s critical nodes in their infrastructure, directed-energy (e.g., laser) weapons, as well as anti-ballistic defensive systems that can intercept in mid-air an adversary’s offensive missiles, are all changing the tactics of warfare for the countries that possess them.

In a parallel development, if some non-state adversaries, such as terrorist groups, achieve the capability to employ miniaturized tactical nuclear weapons or cyberwarfare weapons, they could inflict catastrophic casualties on their more powerful adversaries.

With today’s state and non-state adversaries seeking to exploit these and other new military technologies, military planners are aware that new concepts of warfare policies, doctrine, operation and organizational structures are required to address the challenges presented by the constantly evolving revolution in military affairs.

It is not only in the current era that military thinkers are forecasting the future of warfare; they have done this throughout history. As Lawrence Freedman writes, the future of warfare has always been a matter of concern along with “the causes of war and their likely conduct and cause.” Mr. Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College, London.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/8/book-review-the-future-of-war-a-history-by-lawrenc/ 

Harpoon: Inside The Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters

Joshua Sinai at the Washington Times offers a review of Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz’s Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters.

Terrorist groups like ISIS raise hundreds of millions of dollars to finance their activities and attacks through illicit means. The Islamic Republic of Iran bankrolls its Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah proxies with large flows of cash. Hezbollah raises additional funds by engaging in criminal enterprises such as narco-trafficking across several continents.

Hamas, from its base in the Gaza Strip, smuggles funds to its operatives in the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. These and other terrorist groups also raise funds from their supporters in Europe and the United States, which are sent back through illicit means to their safe havens in the Middle East.

Terrorist groups’ activities, such as sustaining their organizational structures, acquiring weapons, organizing terrorist operations, as well as managing their non-terrorist activities such as managing their social-welfare and educational services, are dependent on continuous funding streams. Counterterrorism agencies, therefore, understand that their terrorist adversaries’ funding sources represent an important center-of-gravity to significantly weaken their overall warfare effectiveness.

In “Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel Katz shed light on previously classified accounts of how Israel, facing wide-ranging terrorist attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and others, forged its intelligence, military, police and diplomatic services into an effective task force — code-named Harpoon — to counter terror-based financing around the world.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/20/book-review-harpoon-by-nitsana-darshan-leitner-and/ 

The Mind Of The Islamic State

Joshua Sinai offers a review of Robert Manne’s The Mind of the Islamic State: ISIS and the Ideology of the Caliphate for the Washington Times.

Ideology plays an important role in terrorists’ warfare. It provides them with a rationale, legitimacy and motivation for attacking their adversaries and a prism through which they perceive events affecting them, particularly the “illegitimate” actions of their enemies whom they are justified in killing because they have transgressed the tenets of their ideological framework.

Ideology is also an important recruiting tool to radicalize new adherents with a narrative to join their cause. It enables terrorists to justify their violence by displacing the responsibility for their violence onto their adversary governments, including even blaming the victims of their attacks.

Understanding the nature of the ideologies adopted by a variety of terrorist groups helps explain the “why and the how” of their warfare, which is one of the first steps required to effectively counter them physically and to formulate counter-ideologies that might weaken what are generally extremist ideologies and persuade their adherents to cease supporting them.

With al Qaeda and ISIS, the primary Islamist terrorist groups threatening Western countries (and their own as well), it is crucial to understand the militant jihadi ideology that drives them. In this regard, Robert Manne’s “The Mind of the Islamic State: ISIS and the Ideology of the Caliphate” is an important and well-argued book.

“The Mind of the Islamic State” traces the evolution of the jihadi ideology that drives such groups to justify their engagement in terrorist violence in pursuit of their extremist objectives. As the author points out, “Political ideologies take decades to form. The mind of the Islamic state represents the most recent iteration of an ideology that has been developing over the past 50 years.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/31/book-review-the-mind-of-the-islamic-state-by-rober/ 

Hacking ISIS: The War To Kill The Cyber Jihad

Joshua Sinai at the Washington Times offers a review of  Hacking ISIS.

Terrorists and their extremist adherents are adept at utilizing the internet, particularly social media platforms, which have become widely accessible globally, and in multiple languages.

These cyberspace platforms are used to spread their extremist ideologies, raise funding, communicate with one another, penetrate across borders into foreign countries that would not permit them to enter physically at their border crossings, and gain new recruits whose only initial contact with them may be via their personal computers.

For counterterrorism agencies, while the primary activity remains to militarily defeat terrorist groups and their operatives in “physical space,” these online terrorist-related social media platforms are an important secondary arena to use cyberwarfare tools to counter the terrorist organizations and their activist supporters who manage and operate such sites, including countering the extremist propaganda they propagate.

The veteran al Qaeda (and its regional affiliates) terrorist group and the relative newcomer Islamic State (known as ISIS) — which has become the latest “superstar” of Salafi jihadi terrorism (although it is also nowadays in sharp retreat as a result of the American-led military coalition campaign against it in Iraq and Syria) are the leading exploiters and beneficiaries of the Internet’s dissemination capabilities.

Since it is fairly straightforward to employ military forces — and specially trained counterterrorism forces — to defeat such terrorist groups, what are effective countermeasures against them in cyberspace, where specialized cyberwarfare tools must be used against them? In answering this question, Malcolm Nance and Chris Sampson’s “Hacking ISIS: How to Destroy the Cyber Jihad” is an important, well-researched and detailed reference resource about how al Qaeda, and now, more prominently, ISIS, operate in cyberspace and the measures required to counter and defeat what the authors term as “cyber jihad.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/2/book-review-hacking-isis-how-to-destroy-the-cyber-/ 

Anatomy Of Terror: From The Death Of Bin Laden To The Rise Of The Islamic State

Joshua Sinai offers a review of Ali Soufan’s Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State in the Washington Times.

Al Qaeda’s horrendous attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 represented a transformative moment in the history of international terrorism, with a foreign terrorist group daring to deploy its operatives from its training camps in Afghanistan to inflict catastrophic damage on its adversary’s soil, and with America deciding to counter this terrorist threat with all means necessary, including pursuing such terrorists wherever they operate.

With the 9/11 tragedy commemorated this week, we are fortunate to have Ali Soufan’s “Anatomy of Terror,” a comprehensive and interesting account of al Qaeda’s history and the emergence of its equally genocidal offshoot, the Islamic State (ISIS). Mr. Soufan is a highly regarded former FBI special agent who was one of the first to investigate al Qaeda prior to 9/11. He is currently head of The Soufan Group, a consultancy on these issues in New York City.

There is much to commend in this important account, beginning with the author’s discussion of the key individuals responsible for the evolution and current state of al Qaeda and ISIS.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/13/book-review-anatomy-of-terror-from-the-death-of-bi/ 

Takedown: Inside The Hunt For Al Qaeda

Joshua Sinai wrote a good review of Philip Mudd's Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda for the Washington Times.

"Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda"is an insider account by a former high-level official at the CIA and the FBI about how both agencies substantially upgraded their counterterrorism capabilities after the U.S. government's failure to prevent al Qaeda's catastrophic attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Philip Mudd is ideally positioned to discuss these issues after a distinguished 24-year career at the CIA, where he rose to become deputy head of its Counterterrorism Center, culminating in a four-year detail in 2005 to the FBI as a deputy director of its National Security Branch.

... Mr. Mudd explains that a measure of success in counterterrorism is not merely “who was captured or killed … but whether operations broke plots and destroyed the networks that could sustain long-term training and planning resulting in another strategic strike.” In this sense, Mr. Mudd concludes, “the focus on these operational figures was well founded: virtually no one, in 2001, would have bet that the United States would not have witnessed another 9/11-style event by now. In this most critical sense, the operational focus was successful. Bin Laden took nine-plus years to take down, and al-Zawahri is still out there, but their organization poses nowhere the strategic threat it did a decade ago, and its leadership is decimated beyond recognition.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/book-reviewtakedown/