Courtesy of http://www.telegraph.co.uk
In an audio message released yesterday, Zawahiri laid out a plan of attack, saying he wanted a "few of the brothers" to commit small-scale strikes to trigger big spending by Washington on security, while awaiting the opportunity for a major onslaught later.
"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," he said.
Keeping America in such a state of tension and anticipation only required a few disparate attacks "here and there", he said.
"As we defeated it in the gang warfare in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we should follow it with ...war on its own land. These disparate strikes can be done by one brother or a few of the brothers."
At the same time, Muslims should seize any opportunity to land "a large strike" on the United States, even if this took years of patience, he said in the audio speech, which was broadcast on an Internet forum used by jihadist groups and lasted 72 minutes.
The Sept 11, 2001 attacks, in which hijacked airliners were flown into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington and a Pennsylvania field, triggered a global fight against al Qaeda extremists and their affiliates. Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.
In his audio speech, Zawahiri said Muslims should refuse to buy goods from America and its allies, as such spending only helped to fund US military action in Muslim lands. He added that Muslims should abandon the US dollar and replace it with the currency of nations that did not attack Muslims.
Zawahiri spoke approvingly of one of the worst attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001, the bombing of the Boston Marathon in April, which U.S. authorities say was carried out by two ethnic Chechen Muslim brothers. The attack killed three people and injured 264.
Zawahiri sought to paint the bombing as part of al Qaeda's violent transnational campaign of jihad or holy war against U.S. interests, even if it was relatively small-scale.
"The Boston incident confirms to the Americans ... that they are not facing individuals, organizations or groups, but they are facing an uprising Ummah (Muslim community), that rose in jihad to defend its soul, dignity and capabilities."
"What the American regime refuses to admit is that al Qaeda is a message before it was an organization," he said.
Zawahiri, suspected by many security specialists to be living in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, added that the al Qaeda message simply was that if Muslims wanted to live in dignity and "be liberated", then they had to defend their dignity.
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