ELEPHANTS IN THE SAHARA

The picture here is of my son, Jackson, next to a prehistoric pictograph of an elephant in the heart of the Sahara Desert. It was carved in the rock thousands of years ago by ancient hunters when the Sahara was like East Africa is today, a well-watered grassland teeming with life.

Hannibal was able to acquire Saharan elephants for his army when he famously crossed the Alps to attack Rome in 218 BC. 2,197 years later, I conducted an expedition that retraced Hannibal’s route over the pass he used — the Col du Clapier on the French-Italian border — with two elephants.

This past January-February, I conducted an expedition 3,000 km across the Sahara. The picture you see was taken in a remote area where Algeria, Libya, and Niger all come together. It is the same region where, a few days after we were there, 32 European travelers were captured and held hostage by a gang of Moslem terrorists. 17 were rescued by Algerian soldiers earlier this month (May). The remaining 15 are still in captivity. I, and those with me including my son, could have been among them.

The terrorists call themselves the Salafist Brigade for Preaching and Combat. "Salafists" are Moslems who desire a return to the "pure" Islam that supposedly existed among the founding generation of Islam and the succeeding two generations. Thus the Salafists currently marauding southern Algeria are emulating the cutthroat bandits who founded Islam by raiding caravans. The 7th Century Arab bandit chieftain Ubul Qassim, who became known as "The Praised One" ("Mohammed" in Arabic), led dozens of razziyas (caravan raids), robbing the travelers, killing the men, and selling the women and children into slavery.

The climate of history once allowed this behavior to flourish. That climate is no longer. Islamic religious banditry is headed towards extinction. I believe that the entire phenomenon of Moslem Terrorism — Al Qaeda murderers, Salafi bandits, Palestinian suicide bombers, Wahhabi imams and Iranian mullahs spewing hate, and all the rest — is the last gasp of religious desperadoes doomed to extinction just like prehistoric elephants in a drying-up Sahara.

Much has been made lately of an "Al Qaeda resurgence." The suicide bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the car bombs in Casablanca, Morocco are being used as evidence that America is losing against Al Qaeda, and that George Bush’s anti-terrorist policies are ineffective. As usual, the liberal media has got it backwards.

The truth is that Al Qaeda terrorists are becoming increasingly confused and desperate. One of the clearest signs is their publicly calling for attacks on Norway. Earlier this month, Al Jazeera Television released an audiotape purportedly of the voice of Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The tape is a confession that the Al Qaeda leadership is so isolated they don’t know the difference between Norway and Denmark.

The audiotape called for terrorist attacks on Coalition members, specifically naming Britain, Australia, the United States, and, mistakenly, Norway. Denmark was a member of the victorious Coalition Forces in the War in Iraq — not Norway.

By including Norway, rather than Denmark, in its target list, the Al Qaeda leadership announced to the world that, hiding in caves and constantly on the run, its intelligence is incredibly shoddy. They meant to say Denmark, and now they can’t compound their embarrassment by admitting it. If they are this confused, their capacity to organize major terrorist acts is severely diminished.

Thus the latest Al Qaeda audiotape is a desperate call to its followers to act on their own, as the leadership is losing its ability to fund and coordinate terrorist acts themselves. So there are attacks in Moslem countries — Saudi and Morocco — that don’t seem to make sense. That’s because they don’t. The perpetrators are undirected Lone Rangers. And that’s all Al Qaeda has left.

Lone Al Qaeda Rangers can perpetrate deadly isolated incidents — but not anything remotely like a systematic campaign of strategic terror. That is over. There is no resurgence. Al Qaeda is living in Desperation City. And it is doing so primarily because one man, George W. Bush, had the courage to stand up to its evil, naming and fighting it by name.

In his moving article, "The Elephant in the Room," To The Point Contributor Dr. Joel Wade described the danger of not being willing to recognize the existence of evil. By declaring radical Moslems morally evil, George Bush enabled America to identify and defeat them.

While not defeated yet, they are being defeated. The day is not that far off when Moslem Terrorists will be as extinct as elephants in the Sahara.