By Clifford May
The Washington Times
Page A13
September 9, 2006
Five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have not been slaughtered a second time on U.S. soil. That is no small achievement. It has come about not because our enemies have been merciful or because they consider our behavior improved. It has come about because we have begun to understand that we have enemies, that they pose a serious threat, and that we must fight them.
Most Americans did not comprehend that on Sept. 10, 2001. When the Cold War ended with a whimper, we wanted to believe peace would prevail. We shrank the military and encouraged the intelligence community to give up such unsavory practices as running spies, sparking coups and making life dangerous for despots.
Experts advised political leaders not to be overly concerned about terrorism or militant Islamism. On July 10, 2001, Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA and State Department terrorism analyst, lamented in the pages of The New York Times that too many Americans had been persuaded that terrorism “is becoming more widespread and lethal,” too many feared that the “United States is the most popular target of terrorists” and that “extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.” He declared: “None of these beliefs are based in fact.”
About the same time, John Esposito, an influential professor at Georgetown University, wrote: “Bin Laden is the best thing that has come along … if you want to paint Islamist activism as a threat. There’s a danger in making bin Laden the poster boy of global terrorism, and not realizing that there are a lot of other forces involved in global terrorism.”
It required thousands of deaths on a single day to demolish such fantasies. Few still doubt that terrorists _ claiming to derive their legitimacy from Islamic doctrine _ seek America’s destruction and believe that access to high technology provides them a means not available to previous generations. But the arguments over what we must do to defend ourselves remain intense, bitter and partisan.
On Tuesday, the White House released what it called an “updated” National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The document asserts _ rightly, I believe _ that America is “at war with a transnational movement … extremist organizations, networks and individuals _ and their state and non-state supporters _ which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.”
Somewhat less accurately, the Strategy asserts that the terrorists “distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder …” As scholar Daniel Pipes and others have documented, the original meaning of “jihad” was “holy war,” in the literal sense. It was by the sword that Islam was spread from Arabia to Africa, Asia and Europe. Those Muslims who now use “jihad” to imply only a spiritual “struggle” should be commended and supported: By promoting such reform they risk the wrath of the militant Islamists _ which means they risk their lives.
The Strategy also indulgences in wishful thinking when it counts as a success “a broad and growing global consensus that the deliberate targeting of innocents is never justified by any calling or cause.” In fact, much of the world has adopted the relativist view, espoused by the Reuters news agency: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
The “updated” Strategy calls advancing democracy a “long-term antidote to the ideology of terrorism.” Left unspoken is an acknowledgment that, in the short run, Islamists have skillfully used increased freedom and democratic reforms to expand their power and deprive non-Islamists of civil rights.
Finally, however, the White House Strategy gets to the heart of the matter: the need to use force against those who understand nothing else. It states bluntly that to win this war, the United States must do everything possible to “kill or capture the terrorists; deny them safe haven and control of any nation; prevent them from gaining access to WMD.”
Speaking to U.S. military officers this week, President Bush added that those plotting against America and other free nations “have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?”
Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, few people were paying attention, and those who did misunderstood what they heard. Five years later, it would be useful if Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Americans and Europeans, could spend less energy fighting one another and more defending their common civilization from its mortal enemies. If anyone has a better plan than the “updated” Strategy that Bush has offered, now would be a good time to reveal it.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
Although this essay appeared in the print edition of The Washington Times, it was not on their web site so we placed it here.
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Cheney: “The terrorists are absolutely convinced that they can break our will”
By John E. Carey
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Vice President Richard Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert for the full hour this morning.
A complete transcript from NBC will be available late; but here are a few of the quotes that caught the attention of many people.
“The terrorists are absolutely convinced that they can break our [the American people’s] will,” said Vice President Cheney.
This statement coincides with the commentary essays of many political and international analysts such as Clifford May who wrote “Time to Unite and Fight” for The Washington Times on Saturday, September 9, 2006.Clifford May wrote, in part, “On Tuesday, the White House released what it called an ‘updated’ National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The document asserts –rightly, I believe — that America is ‘at war with a transnational movement … extremist organizations, networks and individuals — and their state and non-state supporters –which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.’”
“Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, few people were paying attention, and those who did misunderstood what they heard,” Mr. May wrote. “Five years later, it would be useful if Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Americans and Europeans, could spend less energy fighting one another and more defending their common civilization from its mortal enemies.”
Sounds a lot like what the Vice President told Tim Russert on Sunday.
The Vice President also said, when Tim Russert asked if we were creating even more terrorists by our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “I can’t buy that. The Taliban was one of the worst governments of all time….We eliminated their terror training camps…and we are much better off today” than we were while the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan.
On Iraq, the Vice President said, “Saddam also ran one of the worst regimes of all time…he butchered thousands of people…although there is still major, major work to do in Iraq,” the Vice President said, “we are still better off than we were” while Saddam was in power.
On the subject of Pakistan, Vice President Cheney said, “Musharraf puts his neck on the line [for us] every day that he goes to work.”
Cheney said the internal political debate about staying in Afghanistan and Iraq or pulling out sows doubt among our allies and encourages the terrorists.
“Will Musharraf say the U.S. does not have the stomach for the fight?” asked Vice President Cheney.
Mr. Cheney said, “The key to victory is to get locals into the fight….they have to step up and take responsibility for their fate.”
When Mr. Russert asked the Vice president about his statement on May 30, 2005, that “The level of military activity will decline…and they are in the last throws of the insurgency,” the Vice President replied by saying, “The insurgency went on and was longer and more difficult than I had anticipated.
September 10, 2006 at 5:11 pm |
That there hasn’t been another successful attack in the United States on the order of 9/11 is probably the single most pertinent datum in the discussion. A certain complacency is understandable if mistaken, and it is easy to marginalize a threat that is kept at arm’s length, especially if there are ulterior ideological motivations for doing so. It is for that reason that Iraq has been declared Vietnam, a problem in a far place that would go away if we’d just come home.
For that reason Osama bin Laden has turned into the Islamists’ worst enemy. A militant who lived among militants and swam in a sea of militant ideology, he expected a wave of Islamist “awakening” that never came, or in the view of the militants, is yet to materialize but inevitable. It is what happens in the meantime that will dictate the direction of this confrontation
There is, in addition, an attempt to portray fundamental Islam as a monolithic movement by those who would have it so in order to control it. Their world would be that of believer vs. non-believer as a world dichotomy; it is, in fact, a viewpoint validated by the Qura’n. But it isn’t like that, at least yet. The Salafi side is incredibly well-funded by oil but is essentially a non-state actor after the fall of the Taliban; the Shi’ite extremists enjoy their own state funding and formal sanctuary in Iran. Were either of these sides to gain ascendancy over the other Osama’s vision of an overarching world Islamic militancy might yet come to fruition.