September 11, 2003
WE'VE MADE YEMEN UNSAFE?:
The “war on terror”: two years on: The United States’s response to the atrocity of 9/11 was immediate. But the overthrow of the Taliban regime and Saddam’s Iraq has not crushed al-Qaida nor deterred militant resistance to United States forces. In his 100th column for openDemocracy, Paul Rogers assesses the political and human costs of the “war on terror”. (Paul Rogers, 9/10/03, Open Democracy)
The level of organisation that al-Qaida has been able to sustain is indicated not simply by the attacks it has carried out in these two years, but the ones it planned which were intercepted and aborted as a result of intelligence and security work by government authorities.These planned attacks include:
December 2001: the attempted bombing of a US passenger jet;
December 2001: a major attack in Singapore, perhaps even on the scale of 9/11, using multiple truck bombs, aimed at embassies, Changi airport and the financial district;
February 2002: bombings of United States embassies in Rome and Paris;
May 2002: the development of radiological weapons for use in the US;
June 2002: an attempt to shoot down a US warplane in Saudi Arabia;
June 2002: a plan to attack western naval ships in the Straits of Gibraltar.While these planned attacks have been prevented, many more have gone ahead. Together they show a capability that, despite two years of a “war on terror”, is greater than in the two years before the 9/11 attacks. They include:
March 2002: an attack on worshippers at a church in the diplomatic compound in Islamabad (Pakistan), killing 5 people and injuring 46;
May 2002: the killing of 11 French naval technicians and 3 Pakistanis in Karachi, injuring 23 people;
April 2002: the bombing of a synagogue in Djerba (Tunisia), killing 14 German tourists and 7 local people and injuring 24;
June 2002: a bomb attack on the US consulate in Karachi (Pakistan), killing 11 people and injuring at least 45;
October 2002: the killing of a US special forces soldier in the Philippines, and frequent bomb attacks there;
October 2002: a bomb attack on the Limburg tanker off Yemen;
October 2002: the murder of a US diplomat in Amman (Jordan);
October 2002 to January 2003: four attacks on US soldiers in Kuwait;
October 2002: a devastating bomb attack on the Sari nightclub in Bali, killing 202 people including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesians and injuring 300 people;
November 2002: an attack on a US oil company’s helicopter taking off from Sana’a airport in Yemen;
November 2002: an attempt to shoot down an Israeli tourist jet taking off from Mombasa airport in Kenya;
November 2002: the bombing of the Paradise Hotel at Kikambala (Kenya), killing 11 people and injuring 50;
May 2003: the multiple bombing of western targets in Casablanca (Morocco), killing 39 people and injuring 60;
May 2003: the multiple bombing of western residential compounds in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), killing 29 people and injuring 200;
August 2003: the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Djakarta (Indonesia), killing 13 dead and 149 injured.It is evident from this list of incidents that it would be quite wrong to see al-Qaida as a single rigid and hierarchical organisation. While there is evidence of connections between a number of groups, including a degree of coordination, what is much more significant is the extent of transnational support and the ability of national and regional groups to generate and undertake attacks. [...]
In the past two years, many members of al-Qaida and its associated movements have been killed or detained, the Taliban and Iraqi regimes have been terminated and some paramilitary attacks have been prevented.
Against this, there have been far more attacks on western interests across the world than in the equivalent period before 9/11, killing or injuring over 1,000 people. In fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US forces have killed at least 9,000 civilians and injured tens of thousands more. Afghanistan is deeply unstable with Taliban forces still present, and the security situation in Iraq is frankly dire. There are near-weekly warnings of terror attacks, which heighten the sense of alert symbolised by the London Underground simulation of a gas attack and the warnings of anti-aircraft missile attacks on British Airways planes in the last few days alone.
In this global context, it is very hard to accept any argument suggesting that a successful military campaign is being prosecuted and there is every reason to question what is being done. For the moment, there is a singular unwillingness in Washington to face up to the reality of the American predicament. But given the state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan and the beginnings of serious political questioning in the United States, such a dose of reality might be forced on the Bush administration much sooner than might be expected.
What really stands out about this list of particulars is that attacks in the West have uniformly failed, while the West's attacks on Islamicists have been largely successful. Meanwhile, the Islamic world continues to experience an extraordinary level of violence (some of it directed at Westerners) and instabilty (directed at itself). If in the long term Islamic violence was just turned inward, that would be a satisfactory end result to the entire War on Terror. Islamicism is, after all, fundamentally an Islamic problem, one that will ultimately have to be defeated by decent Muslims.
MORE:
What's Going Right (Jim Hoagland, September 11, 2003, Washington Post)
Terrorism operates from a template. It is intended to provoke paralyzing fear, anger and humiliation and to break the will of a population on which atrocities are visited. But the reaction to terror once the initial outrage and horror fade is far less predictable than the terrorists imagine.Posted by Orrin Judd at September 11, 2003 9:05 PMSome societies do break apart on existing fault lines, as Lebanon did in the 1970s and as the car bombers of Baghdad and Najaf hope Iraq will. But other nations adjust and contain the terrorist threat, as Britain did against the Irish Republican Army, as India has in Kashmir and as the United States now does in the greater Middle East.
There is, of course, a crucial difference when the world's only remaining superpower is doing the responding. America's actions reshape the international environment and force other nations to adjust, whether they want to or not. Bush's brash, no-nonsense leadership style added to the sense of injury felt at the United Nations and elsewhere as he moved inexorably to invade Iraq last March. [...]
The world is beginning to absorb and adapt to the changes that the determined U.S. response to 9/11 has created abroad. This is a moment when more disciplined political leadership and more skillful diplomacy from Washington can bring dividends and should be pursued.
Why has this happened?
We grew up with them; they sat next to us in school. We watched the same television; ate the same foods; pined after the same unapproachable girls. They played third; we pitched. They threw a great wiffleball curve; we still hit it off the wall.
And yet, today, two years after this horrific event - the greatest attack on us in our history - they see the world so differently. They see our country as so much more flawed - if not evil - than we do. Certainly, we know of our nation's sins and failures. But we see the successes, the opportunities, the flawed beauty in this land.
These things they cannot see. Or will not.
We see this direct threat by a group of fanatics with a vision of greatness obtainable only by destroying "the other". Not for the first time has man tried to kill "the other." They believe that the past greatness of Islam cannot be re-captured but by driving out the Infidels. This is an impossible task; they must know it. They may drive us physically out of the region; but they cannot drive out our ideals.
I think late at night, bin Laden (if he's still alive) and al-Zawahiri know this. The more educated ones, the ones exposed to Western ideas deep down recognize this. They wish to pull down everything around them.
But here, I'm more removed and distanced from my fellow Americans than I am from radical Islamists thousands of miles away. I think I know them; I think I know what they fear, and what they want to do, and why. But my schoolmates who I played with? I don't recognize them. Sometimes, I don't think I can stay in the same room with them.
Odd. All of this technology - the information revolution - mass communications, the Internet - was supposed to shorten these distances between people. Our misunderstandings would be mitigated; not exacerbated.
But it's not happening, is it?
Steve
Posted by: SteveMG at September 11, 2003 10:29 PMWell, yes, it will have to be defeated by decent Muslims. But are there enough, and what if they don't?
Posted by: JSmith at September 11, 2003 11:07 PMJSmith:
They have to win it. From within. We have to help those win from without.
We both know this.
But why do some many millions of Americans not know this? Why can't they see this?
As I said, they sat next to us in lunchroom. Watched the same television. Played ball with us.
What have they been reading and watching and listening to that we haven't? I mean, do they read Chomsky (using him as a synecdoche) and not question him? Do they believe it all? Why are we able to see the falsity in Chomsky (or Moore or Said or Howard Zinn), and they do not?
I'm stumped.
Steve
Posted by: SteveMG at September 11, 2003 11:12 PMWhy?
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point" - C.S. Lewis, quoted on the link by Pejman Y.
Those who recoil from anger and justice (such as can be accomplished here), those who refuse to fly the flag and sneer at Bush and Rumsfeld, those who yearn for the UN to save us - they are afraid. In a very visceral way, they are afraid. That is why they always shake their heads and somberly say "but" whenever they feel the need to broaden the simplest truths about life and death (see Lileks today). They view themselves as virtuous and wise and evolved, but because they lack courage, their morality melts in an instant. I do not remember that Lewis quote, but it is quite true.
Posted by: jim hamlen at September 11, 2003 11:47 PMJim nailed it. Steve, the answer to your question, as Jim said, is the same answer as to why intelligent people in the West appeased Hitler before World War II, and as to why so many intelligent people in the West, all the way from 1945 to 1990, so fervently opposed any attempt to defend against Communism; because they're afraid of the possible consequences - especially to themselves - of taking a stand. It never changes, and they never change. Only the rhetoric changes.
Posted by: Joe at September 12, 2003 5:31 AMJoe and Jim:
Thanks.
I think I understand what they're thinking, what they believe we should (and should not) do; but I'm stumped as to why they think this.
Why do you two and I see this so differently? We read Chomsky, sit there, check his sources (such as they are), compare his history to that written by others, and say, "No, Chomsky, that's NOT right. That's not how it happened. That is a lie."
But my schoolmates read him and swoon.
The worst thing is that they're on Democratic Underground saying the same thing about us. "How can not see the brilliance of Chomsky? Of Michael Moore? Or Howard Zinn?"
I'm not sure we can really win this war if 10-25% (30%) actually embrace this dark view of America.
SMG
Posted by: SteveMG at September 12, 2003 9:54 AMThe people who honor Zinn, Moore, and Chomsky dominate academia, the news media, the entertainment industry, and the Democratic Party. Not everyone listens to their tune, but many people dance to it because they hear little else. The more sensible voices are drowned out or are too intimidated to even speak. Thank God for blogs like this one.
What bothers me most of all is that some of them are convinced we now are losing what amounts to World War 4 (the Cold War being No. 3) and they're absolutely delighted.
Posted by: George at September 12, 2003 11:03 AMSMG:
I think it is more fundamental.
It is a right-brain left-brain thing. Evidence: creative types are right-brained. Entertainment types are majority right-brained, and also don't get it.
Military types--probably the most diametric opposite of entertainers--are left-brained, and get it.
Some people just aren't capable of being as analytical as others.
Why they are apparently part of God's plan is beyond me.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 12, 2003 12:06 PM