http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1595405,00.htmlSigns of a New Sunni OffensiveFriday, Mar. 02, 2007 By ROBERT BAERThis week's bomb attack on Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan and the murder of four Frenchmen in Saudi Arabia are harbingers of a new 'Sunni offensive' — likely to unfold in Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe Lebanon. And, while there's no hard evidence for it, we shouldn't be surprised if Qaeda-affiliated groups try to take the offensive to Europe and the United States.
The term 'Sunni offensive' is of course misleading. There is no Sunni army, Sunni general or Sunni battle plan, though Bin Laden may wish there were. But neither he nor any other Sunni Muslim has day-to-day control over the faithful. In fact, Bin Laden's recent call to sabotage world oil facilities to punish the United States has gone so far unheeded.
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It's pretty much the same thing in Afghanistan. The Taliban reduce the world to the belief that NATO invaded not to kill or capture Osama bin Laden but rather to destroy a believing, Sunni Muslim regime. If NATO's real mission were to punish bin Laden for 9/11, why is he not dead or behind bars? Or as one CIA officer put it to me, 'It does defy anyone's comprehension how we lost the world's tallest Arab in a moonscape.'
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The militant Sunnis would prefer to call whatever their planning a counter-offensive. In any case, as long as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting and killing Sunnis, Sunnis will remain convinced their existence is at stake. Many will decide they have no choice but to enlist in the jihad, including martyring themselves in another 9/11.
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