Soccer Dad

Three strands not easily broken

While there are, no doubt, many more than three factors that led to 9/11; there are three that I'd like to highlight: 1) the ideology that drove Osama Bin Laden in his war against the West 2) the acceptance of some terror that likely convinced Osama Bin Laden that he could strike at the U.S. with impunity and 3) the failure of the West - the U.S. in particular - to use the tools at its disposal to fight terror.

IDEOLOGY OF ISLAMISM

Perhaps the best article describing the ideology that motivates Osama bin Laden and his band of merry jihadists is The Philosopher of Islamic Terror by Paul Berman. It is about Sayyid Qutb an Egyptian Islamist who agitated against Nasser until he was hanged in the mid-1960's. Still his ideas and writings live on as Berman describes.

Sitting in a wretched Egyptian prison, surrounded by criminals and composing his Koranic commentaries with Nasser's speeches blaring in the background on the infuriating tape recorder, Qutb knew whom to blame. He blamed the early Christians. He blamed Christianity's modern legacy, which was the liberal idea that religion should stay in one corner and secular life in another corner. He blamed the Jews. In his interpretation, the Jews had shown themselves to be eternally ungrateful to God. Early in their history, during their Egyptian captivity (Qutb thought he knew a thing or two about Egyptian captivity), the Jews acquired a slavish character, he believed. As a result they became craven and unprincipled when powerless, and vicious and arrogant when powerful. And these traits were eternal. The Jews occupy huge portions of Qutb's Koranic commentary -- their perfidy, greed, hatefulness, diabolical impulses, never-ending conspiracies and plots against Muhammad and Islam. Qutb was relentless on these themes. He looked on Zionism as part of the eternal campaign by the Jews to destroy Islam.

And Qutb blamed one other party. He blamed the Muslims who had gone along with Christianity's errors -- the treacherous Muslims who had inflicted Christianity's ''schizophrenia'' on the world of Islam. And, because he was willing to blame, Qutb was able to recommend a course of action too -- a revolutionary program that was going to relieve the psychological pressure of modern life and was going to put man at ease with the natural world and with God.

When the question, "Why do they hate us?" is asked, the assumption for some is that the answer is because of something we did. As Berman shows, though, it's clear that it's because of who we are and what we believe that we of the West are an anathema to the Islamists. We are a threat because the worldview we respect is exclusive to a world governed by sharia.

TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE

"Occupation" isn't the reason they hate us. That's related to a point made by the late great Michael Kelly in When Innocents are the enemy (original title), the best column I read on Sept 12, 2001.

Yasser Arafat, who has championed the legitimacy of anti-Israeli terror his entire career, nonetheless was quick to express himself "completely shocked," at an attack he said he condemned, and he offered the American people condolences on behalf "of the Palestinian people."

I don't doubt Arafat's shock. And I don't think he had anything directly to do with the monstrous evil of Sept. 11. Indeed, it is possible that what happened yesterday had nothing to do with the Middle East. But this evil rose, with hideous logic, directly from the philosophy that the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian cause have long embraced and still embrace -- a philosophy that accepts the murder of innocents as a legitimate expression of a legitimate struggle.

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

The West's commiseration with the Arabs in their conflict with Israel and wtih the Palestinians in particular has made resolving that conflict even more difficult. The claim that the Palestinians had a just cause even if one didn't agree with their methods ignores the premise of Palestinian nationalism.

Palestinian nationalism isn't just about the independence for Palestinians, it is also about the destruction of Israel. The difference between Palesitnian nationalism and Zionism isn't one that can be split, as the former seeks to negate the latter.

If territory alone would solve the issue, there would have been peace in the Middle East in 2000 when Israel witdhrew from Lebanon and offered both Assad and Arafat over 90% of the territory that they demanded. Instead Hezbollah re-armed and prepared to fight Israel for the next 6 years and the latter two died without making peace. By understanding the plight of the Palestinian elites in government, academia and the media effectively justified or rationalized the terror war against Israel.

No doubt this rationalization led bin Laden to conclude that he could strike the United States with impunity. The United States struck back, but there is no denying that bin Laden was likely emboldened by the thought that he would not have to pay a price for his attack.

WHAT DID WE KNOW?

If the first two strands that led to 9/11 were ideological, there was a third that was practical. In an article that is remarkable for its prescience, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson wrote about the vast amounts of information that the government learned from the investgations into the embassy bombings and the resulting trial, Terrorism on Trial, three months before that fateful day.

Perhaps the most disconcerting revelations from the trial concern Al-Qaeda's entrenchment in the West. For example, its procurement network for such materiel as night vision goggles, construction equipment, cell phones, and satellite telephones was based mostly in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Bosnia and Croatia. The chemicals purchased for use in the manufacture of chemical weapons came from the Czech Republic.

In the often long waits between terrorist attacks, Al-Qaeda's member organizations maintained operational readiness by acting under the cover of front-company businesses and nonprofit, tax-deductible religious charities. These nongovernmental groups, many of them still operating, are based mainly in the U.S. and Britain, as well as in the Middle East. The Qatar Charitable Society, for example, has served as one of bin Laden's de facto banks for raising and transferring funds.

Osama bin Laden also set up a tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, N.Y.; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo., and Herndon, Va.

If a complacent or naive ideology encouraged Osama bin Laden, the government's failure to use information it had allowed the plot to continue.

If the information that Pipes and Emerson wrote about were used by law enforcement officials, it is possible that the 9/11 plot could have been compromised or disrupted. If the media had followed up perhaps we would have a warning about what was going on.

The media surely dropped the ball. I suspect that law enforcement did too. I can't believe that Atta and company wouldn't have used assets already in place. I'm sure that those contacts would have been minimal, to reduce the chance of exposure, but I can't believe that the connections weren't there.

(It wouldn't be the first time. When authorities were investigating El Sayyid Nosair who was convicted for gun crimes in the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, they ignored papers in his possession that would have tied him to those who were involved in the first plot to destroy the World Trade Center.)

Could 9/11 have been prevented? I suspect it could have. But it required a new way of looking at things. A failure to understand our enemies and how they operated made the attacks possible. I hope that in the past 5 years we'd have learned something as a society. When I see the partisan sniping directed at President Bush, I wonder if the lessons have been learned. This isn't to say that the president has been perfect, just that he's been out ahead of his opponents.

Part of the fault is that of the media that is opposed to Bush's worldview and either don't inform the public properly or mislead the public.

However the President bears at least some of the blame for the failure to understand what's at stake. For too long he has allowed his political and media opponents to define him; to portray him as pursuing failed policies and being ignorant and venal.

Now he's started making his case directly to the American people. It's about time. I hope that he will be able to change a significant number of minds.

Technorati tags: 9/11, President Bush, Sayyid Qutb, Al Qaeda.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 8, 2006 02:30 PM | TrackBack