Posted on 07/06/2002 8:28:15 AM PDT by knighthawk
Editor's Introduction
In her last book Thieves' World, the late Claire Sterling described the failing efforts of the Western democracies in addressing organized crime thusly:
"...sovereign states cannot do anything simply. If they go down to dismal defeat in the war against crime, it will be largely because they are hampered by all the baggage of statehood -- patriotism, politics, accountable governments, human rights, legal strictures, international conventions, bureaucracy, diplomacy -- where the big criminal syndicates have no national allegiences, no laws but their own, no frontiers."
Her words are just as applicable to the Western World today and to the similar threat that confronts it.
The attacks of September 11th killed over 3,000 innocent ordinary people, mostly but certainly not exclusively American, in four connected attacks over a period of three hours. The direct damage in terms of lost lives, businesses, aircraft and buildings is probably around $90 Billion and the indirect economic losses will be many times that.
The Americans lost a similar number of people on December 7th, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy pushed the United States into the centre of the Second World War. The psychological impact of these two attacks was similar, but the response was not. The attacks of sixty years ago were undertaken by a clearly identifiable military force, acting under the directions of the Japanese government. When President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress "What kind of people do they think we are?" it was already clear that the US was going to commit itself to war with all the power and fury it could muster.
Things are not so easy with the September 11th attacks. The enemy that killed so many people and caused so much destruction is nowhere near as tanglible as a nation state. Hidden away among a mass of people in the Muslim World the Islamicist Fundamentalists are difficult to detect and -- except in their Afghan sanctuaries -- are almost impossible to attack.
Worse still are the networks of al-Qaeda terrorists working inside the Western World. They are a poisonous threat both to the greater majority of ordinary Muslim immigrants and to the innocent trust extended to these immigrants by the other citizens of the West. Nor is the ability of al-Qaeda to recruit disaffected Westerners a danger to be lightly dismissed.
The global networks of Islamic Fundamentalists are a threat that must be defeated, but without destroying our own freedoms, the 'baggage of statehood' and our sense of community in the process. One of the foundations of security is intelligence; understanding how al-Qaeda and other Fundadamentalists are organized, how they recruit new members and how they operate is vital.
Emerson Vermaat was born in 1947 and studied law at the State University of Leyden, the Netherlands. He is a senior television reporter who specializes in reporting on terrorism, transnational organized crime and war. He has published a number of books and essays on Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and the globalization of crime.
Emerson Vermaat's exploration of al-Qaeda's networks in Europe is both timely and important on both sides of the Atlantic.
The rest can be found here
Airline security needs to be more vigilant.
We have too many Muslim lovers who see no evil.
That is why we have our troops on the same side as Bin Laden buddies in some conflicts killing Christians.
Buchanan is too wary of Israel to see the problem clearly, maybe too unelectable too.
So we have the current bunch, who can't even fire an INS worker or the overseeing boss who reapproves Atta's visa and the other pilot's visa 6 months post 9/11. We hear that Bush is "furious" over this, but that is not enough. Where is the action there. The President can't get a governemnet official fired? For such blatant endangerment?
Or is he so scared of a stance possibly perceived by some as anti-immigration.
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