"they aren't carrying out small-scale attacks because they don't understand American culture, and therefore fail to grasp how psychologically effective such attacks would be.

Maybe it's Mr. Campos who misunderstands American culture, if he really thinks many small-scale attackes would be "effective" -- they may well be "physcologically effective", but not in any way the islamicists would ever welcome.

Twn: Indeed, this is another glimpse into the MSM's self-fulfilling prophecy wish list. Imagine the media orgasm if such a prediction were to actually occur. We'd be forced to ask ourselves "Why do they hate us?" over and over and over and pontificate about what we must have done this time to deserve another attack.

So, anyone who wants to answer, Why do they hate us?
Do you think that we have brought to justice those who attacked us on 9/11? That those who have suffered and died in the "War on Terror" have any connection to violence against America?
Do you think that, like Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was allowed to happen?

GW:

We didn't bring justice to the Japanese, we just radically reordered their society in our own image. It worked brilliantly. We're doing the same in the Middle East and the results are likely to be similar.

FDR didn't allow Pearl to happen--he was too racist to understand the Japanese capable of it.

GW

They hate us because we are in the way.

We have killed or captured many of the people who attacked us. Not all but many.

Yes, the people we have killed have been enemies (not to say that some innocents have died but in the main we have waged the cleanest war in history) of the United States.

Did you see the President and others in the days following 9/11? Did they look like people who knew the attack was coming?

"Why do they hate us?" Already asked and answered:

To be a prop in someone else’s fantasy is not a pleasant experience, especially when this someone else is trying to kill you, but that was the position of Ethiopia in the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism. And it is the position Americans have been placed in by the quite different fantasy ideology of radical Islam.

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation — in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

As the purpose of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia was to prove to the Italians themselves that they were conquerors, so the purpose of 9-11 was not to create terror in the minds of the American people but to prove to the Arabs that Islamic purity, as interpreted by radical Islam, could triumph. The terror, which to us seems the central fact, is in the eyes of al Qaeda a by-product. Likewise, what al Qaeda and its followers see as central to the holy pageant of 9-11 — namely, the heroic martyrdom of the 19 hijackers — is interpreted by us quite differently. For us the hijackings, like the Palestinian “suicide” bombings, are viewed merely as a modus operandi, a technique that is incidental to a larger strategic purpose, a makeshift device, a low-tech stopgap. In short, Clausewitzian war carried out by other means — in this case by suicide.

But in the fantasy ideology of radical Islam, suicide is not a means to an end but an end in itself. Seen through the distorting prism of radical Islam, the act of suicide is transformed into that of martyrdom — martyrdom in all its transcendent glory and accompanied by the panoply of magical powers that religious tradition has always assigned to martyrdom.

In short, it is a mistake to try to fit such behavior into the mold created by our own categories and expectations. Nowhere is this more tellingly illustrated than on the videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attack. The tape makes clear that the final collapse of the World Trade Center was not part of the original terrorist scheme, which apparently assumed that the twin towers would not lose their structural integrity. But this fact gave to the event — in terms of al Qaeda’s fantasy ideology — an even greater poignancy: Precisely because it had not been part of the original calculation, it was therefore to be understood as a manifestation of divine intervention. The 19 hijackers did not bring down the towers — God did.

--Lee Harris, "Al Qaeda's Fantasty Ideology," Policy Review (Aug. 2002). The whole thing is well worth reading.

Yeah, FDR wanted the Pearl Harbor attack to happen. He wanted the core of the battleline disabled. Every leader going into a war wants the fleet crippled at the outset.
/sarcasm off/

We didn't think they could actually launch a raid that far from their home territory. They didn't think that we'd be that vindictive. Mistakes all around, though the Japanese mistakes were the worst - for them.

Mikey: The really wierd thing is that, if it hadn't been for the Japanese success at Pearl Harbor, we would have gone to war in the Pacific with a battleship-centric strategy, which would have been disasterous.

There are big differences between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor that don't really allow for their comparison; the main one being that with 9/11 we have no specific enemy to blame save for a handful of terrorist that were routed out of Aghanistan years ago. Since, then, I don't think we've killed or imprisoned a single person who is guilty against an attack against the US (the actions of the "insurgents" in Iraq are technically not acts of terror).
Didn't Bin Laden say that the reason behind 9/11 was a protest of US foreign policy in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East in general?

GW:

That's quite wrong. Their culture was to blame as well, so we're fixing it.

David - I know. We got lucky on that one and had to use our carriers as the capital ships because the new battleships (North Carolina class and South Dakota class) were just coming out of the yards - along with about a dozen Essex class carriers. The Japanese admiralty still remained battleship-centric.

We could go on and on with this for a long time about the ramifications of the attack, but still I don't think it is a credible position to take to say that the POTUS wanted the Pacific Fleet crippled on the opening day of the war - especially when the Japanese could have laid waste to the tank farm and the repair/machine shops - and didn't. Too many close shaves at Pearl Harbor to want to invite that.

. . . the actions of the insurgents in Iraq are technically not acts of terror . . .

Driving suicide bombs into crowds of children, planting IEDs in marketplaces . . . legitimate military actions all, right?

/saracsam

GW: what would you expect Bin Laden to say -- that he'd like to run the world and that we're in his way? In fact he's said just that more than once, but luckily for him the West has got quite a remarkable capacity for hearing only what it wants to hear.

Mikey: I didn't mean to suggest that he knew about or wanted Pearl Harbor to happen. He did want us to get into the war and, as with all presidents and all wars, he got what he wanted.

GW: Every once in a while, OBL pays lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, but it doesn't seem to be a big driver for him and he has never, so far as I know, taken action against Israel or Israeli interests. He says that he primary mission is to reestablish the Caliphate, first in the middle east, then extending through its farthest historic borders (thus his rueing the tragedy of Andalusia, by which he means the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492), and then extending it throughout the world. His problem with us stems, he says, from the decision to station US troops in Saudi during and after the Gulf War, which was humiliating and which allowed infidels into the land of the two mosques.

What's unknowable is the effect on OBL of having had a Palestinian mother, which made him very much a second-class citizen within the BL family.

As Mr. Cohen points out, one must take OBLs complaints about US foreign policy exactly as seriously as his complaints about the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, since they both seem to be about as important to him. But it's typical that GW simply cherry picks politically useful quotes from OBL without bothering to attempt to understand his real message.

As for Pearl Harbor, one should note that the Japanese achieved technological surprise for that attack, using a new class of torpedo without which the battleships would have been invulnerable to air launched torpedoes due to the shallowness of the harbor (one of the main reasons the fleet was based there). So, in fact, a successful air attack on the ships was considered impossible, not just unlikely. Now, one can legitimately argue that we shouldn't have been so complacent about Japanese technology, but that's quite a different argument.

First, one reason the Japanese did not get to Pearl Harbor again is that we won the Battle of Midway.

Second one reason Al Qaeda has not mounted another major attack is that immeadiately after 9/11/01, we went out and rounded up every stray muslim with a visa problem in the country. IIRC, there were about 1100 of them. The ACLU is still bitching about those guys, but the results are impressive.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 30, 2005 10:01 PM