Posted on 09/20/2007 4:55:45 AM PDT by Tolik
Despite bin Laden’s bragging, America remains the big stumbling block, the stronger horse
We’ve been arguing over al Qaeda’s aims since before 9/11. Some take Osama bin Laden’s specific complaints seriously. But we shouldn’t, as we learned this month from his latest rambling communiqué, which faulted America for seemingly everything — global warming, high interest rates, shaky home mortgages, and free-market democratic capitalism itself.
Remember that back in the 1990s, he declared war on America for three other reasons: We had troops in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq. And America supported Israel. Now it apparently matters little that there are neither embargoes of Iraq nor American soldiers in Saudi Arabia.
In 2004, bin Laden objected to our logical conclusion that he instead hated the West simply for its freedom. He posed this rhetorical question: “Contrary to what Bush says and claims — that we hate freedom — let him tell us then, ‘Why did we not attack Sweden?’”
I think we can now answer that by pointing out that al-Qaida has just put out a $100,000 murder bounty on a Swedish cartoonist who was a little too free in his caricatures of Islam. Note that Sweden has no troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, lets in plenty of Middle Eastern Muslims and wants no part of George Bush’s “war on terror.”
But then radical Islamists have also threatened Danish cartoonists, Dutch filmmakers, German opera producers, and the pope. All have nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel — but simply do things that radical Islam finds blasphemous.
So aren’t these constantly changing gripes of al Qaeda’s just pretexts for bin Laden’s larger hatred of Western-inspired freedom?
The truth is that bin Laden and al Qaeda want power for themselves, and use religious grievances and shifting political demands to try to achieve it.
In their worldview, Islam’s chance for a renewed united Muslim caliphate was shattered into impotent warring nations by sneaky 19th-century European colonists. They now want to reunite modern Arab nations into an Islamic empire run by the likes of bin Laden and his sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
And they think they can pull it off for a variety of reasons.
First, al Qaeda claims its jihadists drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, leading to the unraveling of the Soviet empire. It doesn’t matter that al Qaeda’s terrorists numbered only a few thousand and played a minor role in the Afghan warlords’ victory. Instead, according to al Qaeda’s propaganda, this tiny Arab legion would become the vanguard of a world-conquering army that would move next against the United States.
Second, bin Laden believes we will ultimately prove weak and suffer the Soviets’ fate. That’s why he keeps talking about breaking up our own states on the model of the now-defunct Soviet Union.
Past American hesitation in the face of attacks on our embassies, military assets and diplomats convinced bin Laden as he plotted 9/11 that we would leave the Middle East to his jihadists. He sees us now squabbling over the costs of Iraq, our counterterrorism measures and Guantanamo Bay. So he still holds out hope that Americans will soon be leaving the region in defeat, and letting down their guard at home.
Third, oil is now sky-high at $80 a barrel. In bin Laden’s view, the longer he is at war, the higher the price of petroleum climbs. That impoverishes Western infidels and ensures that plenty of Middle East petrodollars can be siphoned off to madrassas, radical mosques and terrorists.
Bin Laden also sees how the rival Muslim theocracy in Iran has turned its oil profits into a nuclear-weapons program. He’d like to replace the present Gulf monarchies with self-professed imams and jihadists. Such a single, united Wahhabi theocracy could dole out its oil to subservient importers, and use the profits to acquire enough weapons to unite the Arab world and prepare for the final war against us.
Bin Laden’s problem then is not really tiny Israel or global warming or mortgage interest rates, but an all-powerful and free West led by the United States. It alone has the military and economic power to stop radical Islamists. Plus, we bring the more powerful message of political freedom. And American popular culture, with its informality and egalitarianism, is sweeping the globe, seducing far more adherents than does rote memorization of the Koran.
So, despite bin Laden’s bragging, America remains the big stumbling block, the stronger horse. The United States alone ensures that bin Laden stays a sick man babbling in a cave — and not a Muslim caliph in flowing robes, with billions of dollars in oil under his feet and weapons merchants lined up at his palace door.
Sound absurd? So once did the notion of a crater in Manhattan and $80 a barrel oil.
Let me know if you want in or out.
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Pajamasmedia: http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
Bump.
Most excellent piece. Everyone should have to read it.
The perfect storm
Five things accounted for the rise of al Qaeda
1. Afghanistan. The Afghans, with Western weapons and Gulf money, defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan. Of nearly 800,000 resistance fighters, there were rarely over 2,000 Arabs fighting at one time. But because of the Russian collapse, and Mullah Omar’s coddling of the multimillionaire loud bin Laden, al Qaeda was able to pose to Muslim youth as the saviors of Islam that had destroyed the Soviet Union. That Arabs had little to do with the Afghan victory, much less the collapse of the Soviet Union mattered little. From 1989 on bin Laden was enshrined as some mythical Saladin.2. Islam and globalization. There were in the last 1400 years always wannabe Great Mahdis and zealots who declared jihad. But in this period of globalization and Western-inspired modernism, Islam, autocratic tyrannies in the Middle East, and the languishing Arab Street have all come together to recreate another Islamic wave of jihadism. Bin Laden’s ever expanding list of grievances, from Kyoto to mortgages, reveals that his hatred, born out inferiority, envy, and pride, is existential and elemental.
3. American appeasement. That sad tale from the Iranian hostage taking of 1979 to the attack on the USS Cole is now well known. But in the words of the terrorists themselves, the image of a static, impotent America was fixed, and with it the invitation to hit our assets at will without fear of retribution.
4. The Wall. Richard Clark, George Tenet, and Michael Scheuer may be loud critics, but prior to 9/11 no Americans had more opportunity to save us from known terrorists in the United States. Yet petty jealousies and turf battles ensured that the NSA, CIA, and FBI stayed on parallel, quite separate tracks, as these egomaniacs refused to share information that would have empowered all three agencies. Those walls are now hopefully, down, and with their fall, and the absence of the three above, we have been making good progress rounding up the terrorists among us.
5. Petroleum. Without petrodollars, there are no madrassas, no House of Saud cousins freelancing by pouring money to jihadists, no bought and paid for mullahs mouthing anti-Western drivel, and no chance to get weapons of mass destruction to kill us all.
<...excerpt.. read more at his pajamasmedia blog.>
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
bump
The system of succession in Islam that combined both religion and state under the rule of one caliph. After the assassination of ‘Ali in 661, the caliphate became dynastic. The first dynasty of the Umayyads began in 661, and was centered in Damascus, Syria. It ended with a blood bath in 750. It was followed by the ‘Abbasid dynasty (750-1250) and was centered in Baghdad, the last one was the Ottoman dynasty that was abolished by Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic in 1924. ... www.safeplace.net/members/mer/BAI-III.html
the era of Islam's ascendancy from the death of Mohammed until the 13th century; some Moslems still maintain that the Moslem world must always have a calif as head of the community; "their goal was to reestablish the Caliphate" the territorial jurisdiction of a caliph the office of a caliph wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Caliph is the term or title for the Islamic leader of the Ummah, or community of Islam. It is an Anglicized/Latinized version of the Arabic word خليفة or Khalīfah () which means "successor", that is, successor to the prophet Muhammad. Some Orientalists wrote the title as Khalîf. The Caliph has often been referred to as Ameer al-Mumineen (أمير المؤمنين), or "Commander of the Faithful". ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate
Definitions of egalitarianism on the Web:
The practice of not recognizing, and even eliminating, differences in social status and wealth. highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072549238/student_view0/glossary.html
the doctrine of the equality of mankind and the desirability of political and economic and social equality wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Egalitarianism is the moral doctrine that equality ought to prevail throughout society. One can best understand various types of egalitarianism by asking "Who is supposed to be equal?" and "In what respect are they supposed to be equal?" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism
What is interesting is that while any of the jihadists may look like a joke, we can’t ignore them. Remember that news some month before the Cole of an attempted bombing of an American vessel when the small boat loaded with explosives simply drowned. Its too tempting to laugh them out as hapless miserable clowns until you remember that the next time they (or some other “they”) succeeded.
Modern technology did lower the entry cost for evil on large scale to be successful. No need in the first class military of Germany or Japan WWII size supported by the first class industry. You can buy in on the cheap (relatively speaking). Plus they need central command even less than Red Brigades needed Soviets directions. A distributed network of suicidal/homicidal maniacs in a small world of modern communications and miniaturized technology. Its hard to stay optimistic sometimes...
No more effort should be put into answering this question. Bin Laden isn't motivated by "wanting" something. No amount of concession on our part will ever appease him. (By the way, by "bin Laden," I mean the whole islamofascist movement. In my opinion, Osama bin Laden is cave paste and has been since Tora Bora.)
No, the terrorists are driven by only one goal: destruction. They may cloak it behind lofty rhetoric or pretentious motives, but when the dust clears, the only reason they're murdering people and blowing up buildings is because they like murder and mayhem. Nothing more.
We don't have to spend any more time trying to "understand" them or to see things from their point of view. They HAVE none! They are simply a disease whose sole purpose is the destruction of anything they focus on, be it the Trade Center, a London bus, a train in Madrid, or an auditorium full of school children in Beslan.
Theirs is not a means toward an end. Mayhem is the end in itself. Time spent trying to ascertain a motive is time better used rooting them out and crushing them.
Very true !
Look at Reid the shoe bomber, looked at by most as a dunce
BUT if he had succeeded blowing up a trans Atlantic airliner .......
Earlier today on the radio (770 AM -NYC) It was reported that an person, male , 26 years old, recently returned from a visit to Lebanon, where his family emigrated from, was running around a park in Dearborn with an AK-47.
The guy has a web site where he proclaims allegiance th Hamas and posts photo’s of himself with Hamas terrorists taken while in Lebanon.
The Dearborn police are investigating but no mention publically of his affiliations.
In his original diatribe against the west he not only used troops in Saudi Arabia as an excuse but the immorality of hollywood. Since they have proven to be such valuable allies he’s stopped doing that.
bttt
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