The Benghazi militant group Ansar al-Shariah is under attack by a renegade former general trying to rid Libya of political Islam. But in response, the militia has taken aim squarely at Washington.
“We remind America of their defeats in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia,” Mohammed Ali al-Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al-Shariah, declared this week in a videotaped statement, warning that the United States would face “much worse” if it tried to intervene in Libya.
Locked in a local battle for territory but with an eye cocked warily at the West, Mr. Zahawi is in many ways a prime example of the growing terrorist threat of “decentralized Al Qaeda affiliates and extremists” that President Obama described Wednesday in a speech at West Point. Although less able or inclined to strike the American homeland, this diffuse patchwork of groups now poses “the most direct threat” to the United States and its interests, especially abroad, Mr. Obama said.
