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One of the blogosphere’s few true 800 lb gorillas, Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame, interviews best selling novelist Steven Pressfield:

Interesting.

For one thing, I hadn’t realized Reynolds does short, Larry King-style vignettes. Considering that the MSM and the social media crowd have been going around the last few years saying “blogging is dead”, bloggers who can roll out professional quality television type productions without anyone batting an eye testifies to the durability of the medium.

Secondly, Steve probably sold more books with an Instapundit appearance than any other media venue, with the possible exception of a NYT book review.

Architect of Global Jihad by Brynjar Lia

Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al Qaida Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri is Brynjar Lia’s definitive biography of the shadowy terror theorist, Islamist intellectual and sometime jihadi, Mustafa bin Abd al Qadir Sitt Maryam.

Sitt Maryam, who went by al-Suri in jihadi circles, was a red haired, fair-skinned Syrian renegade from the Muslim Brotherhood who was trained in military tactics and explosives in Saddam Hussein’s terrorist camps, passing on his skills to fellow “Arab Afghans” during and after the Soviet War. Attracted to secular military theory, guerrilla warfare tactics and strategy rather than theological disputes, hating the West but despising Salafist radicals, Lia’s Abu al-Suri is an isolated and anomalous figure in “the jihadi current” of the 1990’s and post-9/11 era.

“A born critic” with a grim and unsmiling demeanor who entangled himself in acrimonious personal feuds with leading jihadis, including Osama bin Laden, al-Suri failed to win many adherents to his insightful “system not organization” (nizam la tanzim) theory of jihad until his arrest caused his writings, especially his magnum opus The Global Islamic Resistance Call to go viral in the Islamist darknet.

A true intellectual, widely read in western literature and military writings, al-Suri crafted a stategy of jhad that adapted arguments of 4GW, “leaderless resistance” and classical Maoist insurgency to suit Islamist purposes and conditions while rejecting secret, hierarchical, organizations and al-Qaida’s “Tora Bora mentality” as historical failures. Self-radicalization and “sudden jihad syndrome” among alienated Western Muslims was the stuff from which al-Suri hoped to build a massively decentralized, open source, self-sustaining campaign of terrorism.

A hundred and forty some pages of text in Architect of Global Jihad are devoted exclusively to excerpts from al-Suri’s 1,600 page treatise on terrorism operations and strategy. He was a serious and determined opponent of Western civilization’s core values, despite having enjoyed long stretches of reasonably comfortable Western exile in Spain and “Londonistan” to such a degree that al-Suri was in no particular hurry to rejoin the jihad and even acquired the unenviable (and inaccurate) reputation of only being a “pen jihadi”.

Musab al-Suri, who is likely dead at the hands of Baathist jailers, is best described as an Islamist parallel to Vladimir Lenin before the Bolshevik Revolution. The similarities are striking, the irascible temperment, formidible intelligence, the frustrating politics of exiled revolutionary communities, the ideological marginalization both men endured as radicals in a community of already extreme activists and the embrace of terrorism (tactically in Lenin’s case, strategically in al-Suri’s). al-Suri and Lenin, despite wide ideological differences, as revolutionaries represent the psychological type Eric Hoffer termed “true believers” – pitiless, absolutely committed, intellectually rigid on matters of principle but tactically flexible and creative in terms of method.

Such men are dangerous, to themselves as well as to society.

Strong recommendation:

ADDENDUM:

Related posts on or including Abu Musab al-Suri

Lexington Green – Abu Musab al-Suri: Theorist of Modern Jihad and The Networked Jihad: Parasitic on Developed World Technology, Information, Ideas

Charles Cameron –A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto

John Robb – SURI: nizam, la Tanzim (system, not organization) – Global Guerrillas

The Jamestown Foundation –The Jamestown Foundation: Al-Suri’s Adaptation of Fourth … , The Jamestown Foundation: Al-Suri’s Doctrines for Decentralized … and The Jamestown Foundation: Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and the Third …

Jihadica –Abu Mus`ab Suri: Architect of Global Jihad Neglected? and Training for the Lone Jihadi

The Hoover Institution – The Terror Fringe

Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba by Stephen Tankel

I returned from Texas yesterday to find on my doorstep, a review copy of Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba by Carnegie scholar Stephen Tankel.  Mirv Irvine of CNAS describes it thusly:

…one of the definitive accounts of Lashkar’s rise as well as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and his book should be the go-to-guide for those looking to understand Pakistan’s reliance on proxies against India and its attached baggage

Moreover, my co-blogger and expert on esoteric religious militancy, Charles Cameron has already expressed book envy of this review copy and covets it. Heh. With such strong endorsements, I am moving it to the top of the pile for immediate reading.

Thanks to courtesy copy sent by Tom, I just began reading this:

Many people, including myself, have had the experience of a loved one suffering with cancer or battled cancer themselves. Cancer is an onerous, arduous disease, but having your child be diagnosed with cancer must be another whole level of terrifying.

Will have a review and something extra soon.

Sharp analysis on America’s homegrown jihadists by J.M. Berger in The Atlantic:

Why U.S. Terrorists Reject the Al Qaeda Playbook

…So the idea of a cadre of terrorists who can act on their own initiative is, to terrorist leaders, very appealing. The problem is that these new recruits aren’t quite with the program, in ways large and small.

One element of the individual jihad that most homegrown terrorists can’t seem to master is the part where you keep your mouth shut. It’s been a recurring theme, highlighted explicitly by American Al Qaeda member Adam Gadahn and in recent issues of Al Qaeda’s English-language magazine, Inspire:

We have witnessed that operations done by lone individuals has proven to be much more successful. So what can we learn from this? Group operations have a greater tendency of failing than lone operations due to the idea (of the operation) escaping the mind and tongue to other individuals. Even if those individuals are trustworthy in your eyes, there is still that 1% chance that someone from the intelligence agencies are listening in and paying attention to your groups’ actions or that the person you are talking to might be working for the enemy or that he might be pressured at a later period to give information to them. With lone operations however, as long as you keep it to yourself, nobody in the world would know what you’re thinking and planning.

….The problem with individual jihad is, ironically, its individuality. Although loose lips are probably the most operationally significant manifestation of this failure to conform, it works on the ideological level as well.  

For instance, Al Qaeda’s leaders and its most visible propagandists have repeatedly drummed their justifications for killing American civilians. From an operational standpoint, civilian targets are easier to hit, but Al Qaeda also estimates that they make for more effective theater, driving home the point that no Americans are safe from the terror network’s reach for as long as its list of grievances remains unsatisfied.

….Yet cognitive dissonance still creeps in. American terrorists inspired by Awlaki have chosen to aim their fire far more discriminately….

Read the rest here.

Berger is the author of Jihad Joe, reviewed here by Charles Cameron.