Al-Qaida Wants to Force Increase in U.S. Security Spending that Hurts Economy
Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called for Muslims to carry out small attacks on American soil that hurt the U.S. economy, Reuters reported on Friday.
Zawahiri’s audio speech was posted online Sept. 12, the day after the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. He said if small groups of “brothers” wreak havoc “here and there” in the United States, they could force a budget-busting increase in U.S. national-security spending, according to the wire service. It quotes a transcript released Friday by the SITE monitoring service.
"We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure," Zawahiri reportedly said.
He praised the Boston Marathon bombings in April, allegedly carried out by two ethnic Chechen Muslim brothers who lived in the Boston area. He further called for Muslims to boycott buying American goods and stop spending U.S. currency.
Counter-terrorism experts in the West have warned of so-called lone wolves who become radicalized and carry out attacks such as what Zawahiri proposed.
