The November special issue of Inspire, a slick new English-language Web magazine produced by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, aims to inspire young American Muslims to kill their neighbors, reports the Wall Street Journal. In addition to offering new details about the attempted bombing of two U.S. cargo planes last month, the third issue of Inspire provides hard evidence of what many analysts once said was impossible: the growth of homegrown Muslim terrorism in America from a secondary nuisance into a major threat.
To bring down America, “we do not need to strike big,” the editors of Inspire boast. “Attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations” will “bleed the enemy”–a strategy of death “by a thousand cuts.” One article claims that the recent effort to bomb FedEx and UPS cargo planes cost only $4,200: two Nokia phones at $150 each, two H-P printers at $300 each, plus “shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses.” The editorial package offers a blend of photos, feature stories, insider details, snappy news bits, and verse-quoting theological justifications for terrorist attacks, calculated to appeal to American Muslims who grew up on glossy magazines like Details and GQ. It is notable for its collegiate sense of humor, which includes the fact that the plotters dropped a copy of Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” into one of the bomb packages.