Inside the Revolution

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  With the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter in the middle of a Radical no-man’s-land, the Americans had suddenly lost the initiative. Now, rather than a quick strike and rapid extraction operation, U.S. forces had to literally fight their way house by house, street by street, block by block just to get to the crash site and try to recover the dead and wounded that were there. Thousands of heavily armed jihadists poured into the streets and began converging on the site. As the hours passed and night fell, the firefight intensified. Neither the Delta teams nor the Rangers were having success in extracting the bodies of the chopper’s two crew members.

  The battle lasted eighteen hours. Eventually the Delta operators and Army Rangers were able to reassemble their team and fight their way out of the city. But they were completely unprepared for what they would see next.

  “If you remember the news footage of our soldiers,” Boykin recalled, “their bodies were dragged through the streets and mutilated. And some of the stories have never even been told. It would be too painful for the families to tell the whole story, but the abuse and mutilation, particularly by the women in Mogadishu, was something that just is incomprehensible to us. What causes someone to be that way? Is it just a tribal thing? Is it just a cultural thing? Or is it part of their theology?

  “By military standards, it was a victory for us,” Boykin concluded. “We captured more than the six [of General Aidid’s top commanders] that we went after—we captured about twenty-one of them. We lost eighteen Americans dead and over seventy wounded. It seems like a high casualty count. But then compare it to the casualties on the other side. Conservative estimates by the Red Cross are that we killed and wounded 1,100 people in an eighteen-hour battle. Now, by any standards, that’s a victory. However, that was when we realized you can win the battle and lose the war.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “First, because the American media called it a disaster—a huge military failure,” Boykin explained. “Second, the Clinton administration pulled all of Task Force Ranger out of Mogadishu before we had completed our mission, before we had captured Mohammed Aidid.”

  “What was the effect of the White House decision to withdraw prematurely?” I asked.

  “The extremists there were encouraged, particularly Osama bin Laden,” Boykin replied without hesitation. “Now, I am one who does not believe Osama bin Laden was there, involved in that battle. I’ve seen no evidence of that. But he was certainly associated with it. He was certainly tied to it in terms of probably providing material and financial support to those people, but certainly ideological support, moral support. And then we gave him an opportunity, as a result of our withdrawal, to once again proclaim that Allah had shown them favor and that more good Muslims should come to the Islamic extremist cause. And they did.”

  How Serious a Threat?

  I asked General Boykin to take these four examples—the U.S. failure to rescue our hostages in Iran, the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon after the Marine barracks attack, the Soviets pulling out of Afghanistan, and the U.S. pulling out of Somalia—and put them into a broader context. What were the implications of these events? What was the Big Picture?

  “Well, first of all, there are 1.3 billion Muslims around the world,” Boykin told me. “And I’ll just tell you right now, Joel, I don’t think that every Muslim is a threat to America or to the West. I think there are many who really would like to see this extremism go away because it in fact is causing more problems for them than it is helping their cause. But if only one percent of the 1.3 billion are extremists and jihadists, do the math. That’s frightening. I mean particularly when they are willing to die for their cause, when they believe that martyrdom is the surest way to heaven—that’s frightening. If that one percent all turned into suicide bombers, just think what a threat that would be.

  “As we look at every time that we have been up against these extremists, we’ve either been unsuccessful in our objectives or, more importantly, we’ve not been willing to stay the course and see it through and to fight to win, which is exactly what happened in Mogadishu. It’s exactly what happened after the Beirut bombing in 1983. And it’s exactly what many advocate in terms of our operations in Iraq and even Afghanistan today. All that has done is emboldened the extremists. All that has done is given them fodder for their propaganda. It has given them credibility as they use the Internet, use the broadcast media, use every outlet to broadcast their propaganda, to say that Allah has shown them favor, to say, ‘You need to now align yourself with our cause.’ It has allowed them credibility to bring more young Radicals into the cause.

  “That’s one of the reasons that I think that staying the course—and I don’t mean tactically, I don’t mean necessarily using exactly the same methodologies that we’re using today, but staying the course strategically—in Iraq is very critical. Why? Because if we give the Radicals this opportunity for more propaganda by pulling out and not fighting this radicalism, all we’re going to do is increase their recruiting, increase their opportunities for finding more young Radicals.”

  I asked, “With all your years of experience in the Pentagon, commanding Delta Force, hunting jihadists around the globe, in your judgment, how serious to U.S. national security is the threat of Radical Islam in the twenty-first century?”

  “When I came into the Army in 1971, we were focused on the Soviet Union,” Boykin replied. “Even though we were fighting in Vietnam, our real threat was the Soviet Union. But I would say to you, Joel, that the threat that Radical Islam presents to not only America but to the world today is an even more serious threat than when we were in a nuclear standoff during the Cold War. And it’s more concerning to me because this is an enemy that is hard to understand. It is an enemy that is easy to ignore, and it is an enemy that is absolutely relentless.”

  “What’s the mind-set of the jihadist movement? What do they want? What’s driving them?”

  “Well, first of all, I think their mind-set is very clearly based on their own manifesto that they are adhering to—a very radical, extreme interpretation of the Qur’an. They clearly believe that infidels—infidels defined as those that do not serve Allah—must either be converted or killed.”

  The “Top Five” List

  “What, then, is the worst-case scenario?” I asked.

  “I think the worst-case scenario is that the jihadists continue in their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” Boykin said without hesitation. “Weapons of mass destruction are available to them now, particularly chemical and biological, and those are not hard to make. But the worst-case scenario is, I think, that they have nuclear capabilities within these terrorist organizations, within the jihadist movement; that they intimidate Europe to the point that Europe is no longer capable of standing against them as they have done historically; and that they take their extremism to the entire world, and people start to buckle under the intimidation and pressure of what I would see as a huge Islamic movement.”

  How exactly would the Radicals hit us?

  Boykin gave me his “top five” list of scenarios that deeply trouble him and his colleagues in the military and intelligence community.

  Worst-Case Scenario No. 1: Once Iran acquires operational nuclear weapons, they could attach these warheads to short-to-medium-range ballistic missiles, hide such missiles in commercial containers (used to transport cars, farm equipment, toys from China, and so forth), and then launch those missiles off the backs of container ships approaching major American port cities. As portrayed in my novel Dead Heat, this would give the enemies of the United States the decisive element of surprise. A missile fired at Manhattan, Los Angeles, Seattle, or Washington, D.C., would take less than five minutes to impact, giving civilians no effective warning and no time to evacuate, and giving U.S. military forces precious little opportunity to intercept those missiles—even if we had a missile-defense system guarding the homeland, which we currently do not.

  Iranian forces would not have to carry out such attacks themse
lves, of course. They could provide nuclear weapons and missiles to terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, or some other Radical group as proxies to carry out their apocalyptic agenda.

  Worst-Case Scenario No. 2: Iran or other Radical states or groups could load nuclear weapons onto private planes taking off from Canada, Mexico, or another foreign country, bound for the United States. Once inside our airspace, they could then fly kamikaze missions into American cities or simply detonate the nuclear weapon inside the plane itself—over their intended target—without initiating a dive-bombing sequence or making any other obviously hostile moves that might alert air-traffic controllers to the threat. Passengers and cargo on private planes receive few if any security clearances before entering U.S. airspace. No ID checks. No metal detectors. No luggage screening. All this creates enormous holes in our homeland security defense systems, which Radicals may soon take advantage of.

  Worst-Case Scenario No. 3: Radicals could load nuclear weapons onto private yachts or other boats entering the harbors of major American cities and detonate these weapons close to population centers, airports, and naval bases.

  Worst-Case Scenario No. 4: Radicals could smuggle nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction into the U.S. through Canada or Mexico to be detonated deep in the interior of the country. People, drugs, and weapons are smuggled into the U.S. all the time. U.S. homeland security has improved significantly since 9/11, but in many ways, our borders are still Swiss cheese, making us extremely vulnerable to catastrophic attacks of this nature.

  Worst-Case Scenario No. 5: Even without access to fully developed, state-of-the-art nuclear bombs and nuclear warheads, Radicals could still hit us hard. They could, for example, build and detonate “dirty bombs”—bombs made with conventional explosives such as dynamite, mixed with waste from nuclear power plants or other radiological substances—inside the United States. Experts say such devices would not cause the same magnitude of catastrophic death or destruction as a true nuclear weapon, but they would still be psychologically and economically devastating.4 We are also vulnerable, Boykin noted, to chemical and biological weapons in subways and water systems.

  “The fifth scenario is my greatest concern,” Boykin would later elaborate in an e-mail to me, although he added that the combination of elements from several of these scenarios is very worrisome. “All the others are real possibilities, but they require a fair amount of logistics and consequently a fair number of people who know what is happening. That means there is a greater chance of one of the intel services finding out and preventing it. But dirty bomb (or chemical or biological) materials could come in across the Mexican border fairly easily, I am sad to say.

  “The other way is for the terrorists to recruit a local in the North Carolina or South Carolina coastal region to bring things in aboard his sport fishing vessel, to which no attention is paid, and put it in his pickup and drive it to D.C. A dirty bomb would shut down our government even though it would not kill millions of people. In the confusion inside D.C., other conventional bombs could be used to destroy much of the U.S. government infrastructure. I am concerned about the growing number of Americans who have been recruited to Islam. They are usually angry young men with a sense of hopelessness. Even if they are not suicidal, they may very well be genocidal as well as eager to seek revenge for what they see as injustice. These people could make several scenarios more feasible. Think of the devastating psychological effects of a dirty bomb disrupting our government. The recruiting of the Radicals would go off the scale and embolden every radical Muslim in America to support the ‘soon return of the Mahdi and the soon rise of the caliphate.’”5

  Longer term, Boykin also worries about a sixth scenario. Once Iran or another Radical state is able to build long-range, intercontinental ballistic missiles and attach nuclear warheads to them, such states could fire these missiles at the U.S. and our allies. We are working hard on building missile-defense systems capable of stopping such attacks, but these systems are not yet fully operational and continue to arouse enormous resistance from some members of Congress, from some of our allies, and most notably from the Russians.

  The Iranian Bomb

  How close is Iran to having nuclear weapons?

  Boykin told me that based on everything he had seen and heard during his tenure at the Pentagon, he believes that “within two years, maybe three,” the Iranians will “develop a nuclear weapon, a deliverable nuclear weapon.”

  Translation: 2010 or 2011.

  “We know that Ahmadinejad has centrifuges spinning. We know that he has the technology. He has the scientists, and he certainly has the determination. Ahmadinejad is a very, very dangerous man in my view. I believe that the world should pay close attention to what he has said. Some would say, ‘Well, that’s just rhetoric.’ But let’s go back and look at Hitler’s rhetoric in 1933 and what ultimately occurred.”

  “Given all that you know about the Ayatollah Khomeini from the 1970s and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today,” I asked, “which one is more dangerous?”

  For Boykin, it was not a close call. “I think Ahmadinejad is far more dangerous than the Ayatollah Khomeini was because he has more resources,” he told me. “Certainly he has more money as a result of the oil in Iran. He has greater weapons capabilities. He has a more sophisticated army and military in general. And regardless of what the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate says, he is developing nuclear capabilities.”

  “In your view,” I asked, “can the West successfully deter or negotiate with Ahmadinejad and his regime in the kind of classic balance-of-power approach that worked with the Soviets?”

  “My view is that negotiating with Ahmadinejad is a waste of time,” Boykin replied. “I don’t think there’s anything that you can appeal to in Ahmadinejad’s view of geopolitics, of life in general, that would result in any kind of meaningful agreement with the West. I think Ahmadinejad sees himself as a man who is supposed to hasten the arrival of the Mahdi. He has even indicated that in his speeches. Ahmadinejad believes that the Mahdi will come as a result of his efforts, part of which includes destroying or at least subjugating Israel. And so I think the threat goes beyond just nuclear weapons. I think the threat really is a threat of growing Radicalism within Iran, which is influencing much of the thinking in the rest of the Islamic world. And ultimately, when a man is that driven—when a man is that convinced that Allah is holding him accountable to do that [destroy Judeo-Christian civilization]—I think to believe that we could negotiate with him in any meaningful way is just inane.”

  A Grand Finale

  Is General Boykin correct?

  Are Radical Islamic jihadists in general—and the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran in particular—actively seeking weapons of mass destruction and specifically nuclear weapons to destroy Western civilization and usher in the end of days?

  Kamal Saleem certainly thinks so. “Ahmadinejad is in a race to create nuclear weapons,” this former Lebanese terrorist—once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—told me. “Ahmadinejad is a true Muslim zealot. You know in the Muslim world he is a hero. Why? Because he’s fulfilling his duty to usher in the Mahdi. The Mahdi is the Muslim Messiah who would usher in a Muslim one-world order, which is ruled by one Muslim man. And that’s his heart’s desire. If you ask anybody on the street in the Middle East, they know this. But when you ask somebody in the United States of America about this, they have no clue. They don’t know what Ahmadinejad is all about. It’s world domination, to take over the world—one world order—that’s it.”6

  Walid Shoebat agrees. “They want a grand finale,” this former Palestinian terrorist told the producer of our Epicenter documentary film. “They don’t want to simply put a bomb in a bus or in a mall. They want a grand finale; they want one operation that kind of cripples America once and for all—be it dirty bomb, or be it a real nuke.”7

  Porter Goss, director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2004 through 2006, thinks so as well. “There’s no question in my mi
nd that Ahmadinejad and people in the military in Iran are seeking the Persian Bomb for military purposes,” he told me as I researched this book. “If that is allowed to happen, we’re talking about a nuclear weapon in the hands of a Radical. That would be a huge, huge watershed in the geopolitical world.”8

  “Will the CIA know when Iran has the Bomb before they use it?” I asked.

  Goss was not so sure. Back in 1998, he noted, India and Pakistan stunned the world by testing nuclear weapons within days of each other when not a single Western intelligence agency—including the CIA—had any idea either country was so close to having the Bomb. Calling it “the biggest intelligence failure” in the CIA’s history to that point, Goss warned that “the intelligence community had failed to give sufficient priority to the development of nuclear weapons by sovereign states. I think we had been lulled into the fraternity of the nuclear club and [into thinking] that the folks in the International Atomic Energy Agency had things under control and were doing their job effectively. It turned out not to be true.”

  “Could such a catastrophic intelligence failure happen again?” I asked. “Is it possible that the CIA and other U.S. and Western leaders might fundamentally misunderstand Iranian intentions and misread Iran’s technological capabilities and suddenly be confronted with a nuclear-armed Islamic regime well ahead of their current assessments?”

  “Yes,” Goss conceded, “there could be another surprise.”

  Alireza Jafarzadeh, a leading Iranian dissident who strongly opposes the Ahmadinejad regime, also believes Tehran is feverishly pursuing nuclear weapons. “This is the nightmare scenario,” he told me when I interviewed him in 2008, “that the most Radical Islamic extremist regime—which is already the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; which is now fully entrenched in the most violent way in Iraq, killing thousands of innocent people; which has called for wiping Israel off the map and an end to the United States; and which has this global Islamic rule agenda and believes in the end of the world—would now get the nuclear bomb.”9