In the two decades before 9/11, Islamic radicals launched a series of attacks aimed at weakening or overthrowing their regional leaders. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to overthrow the dictatorship of Hafez Assad. In Saudi Arabia, a group of radical Muslims seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. In 1981, a disciple of Faraj named Khalid Islambouli assassinated Sadat. In subsequent years, Islamic radicals killed other senior Egyptian officials, although their attempt on President Hosni Mubarak’s life was unsuccessful. In 1995, a radical group firebombed the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan. Two years later, Islamic radicals detonated explosives at an archaeo-logical site near the city of Luxor in Egypt. The blast killed between fifty and a hundred civilians, Egyptians as well as tourists. The radicals spilled a lot of blood during this period, but it was mostly Muslim blood.
Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, a segment of the radical movement decided on a new strategy. In a fateful shift, Zawahiri abandoned the tactic of fighting the “near enemy” and decided to take the battle to the “far enemy,” specifically the United States. According to Montasser al-Zayyat, a former associate, Zawahiri’s decision astounded Muslim radicals and “surprised the whole world.”11 Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood disagreed so strongly with Zawahiri that its leaders publicly criticized him and severed ties with Islamic Jihad. But there were other radical Egyptians, such as Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, who agreed with Zawahiri. In Afghanistan Zawahiri met Osama bin Laden, who was also shifting his sights from the near enemy to the far enemy. Soon Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad merged with bin Laden’s group and a new organization, Al Qaeda, was born.
If Zawahiri and bin Laden had not changed course, 9/11 would not have happened. Why, then, did they do so? In his book The Far Enemy, Fawaz Gerges argues that the radical Muslims’ strategy of fighting the near enemy proved unsuccessful, and so they decided to try something else. Gerges points out that by killing Muslim civilians the radical Muslims provoked a massive wellspring of protest from the community. (We saw this with the bombing in Amman, Jordan, on November 9, 2005.) This public reaction then provided a justification for the regimes to mount crackdowns on the radicals. In Saudi Arabia, the regime ousted and then beheaded the radical Muslims who took over the Grand Mosque. Egypt launched a systematic campaign to imprison or kill radical dissidents. Using its customary brutality, the Assad regime in Syria massacred thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers. “When jihadis met their Waterloo on home-front battles,” Gerges writes, they “turned their guns against the West in an effort to stop the revolutionary ship from sinking.”12 This may be correct as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Gerges fails to explain why Muslim radicals like Zawahiri and bin Laden, who apparently could not defeat their local governments, came to the conclusion that they could defeat the vastly more formidable United States.
Zawahiri and bin Laden themselves supply the answers to this question. In his book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, Zawahiri writes, “The battle today cannot be fought on a regional level without taking into account the global hostility toward us.” Infidel tyrants like Mubarak are simply “hired policemen who are faithfully serving the occupiers and enemies of the Muslim nation.” Moreover, “It is clear that the Jewish-Crusader alliance, led by the United States, will not allow any Islamic force to reach power in any of the Muslim countries.” In short, Zawahiri came to the conclusion that the near enemy could not be defeated because of the far enemy. “Therefore,” he wrote, “we must move the battle to the enemy’s grounds to burn the hands of those who ignite fire in our countries.”13 To rephrase his earlier slogan, Zawahiri now became convinced that the road to Cairo and Jerusalem ran through New York.
Even so, what would give radical Muslims the idea that they could attack the United States without being decimated? From bin Laden we learn that the radical Muslims plotted the 9/11 attack after concluding that the far enemy was weaker than the near enemy. Despite the great wealth and power of the United States, bin Laden and his associates became convinced they could launch a devastating strike on American shores and win the ensuing battle. Bin Laden had witnessed a united force of Muslim fighters, the so-called Arab Afghans, drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The Arab Afghans, bin Laden notes, “managed to crush the greatest empire known to mankind. The so-called superpower vanished into thin air.” Following the Soviet collapse, bin Laden began to devise a plan to inflict on America a fate “just like that of the Soviets—military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.” Even though the demise of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world’s only superpower, bin Laden decided that “America is very much weaker than Russia.” Bin Laden based his opinion on America’s military conduct in previous years. He saw that when America found itself in a drawn-out guerrilla war in Vietnam, it accepted defeat and withdrew. Americans, bin Laden concluded, love life so much that they are not willing to risk it. In short, they are cowards. When only eighteen American troops were killed in Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, “America fled in the dark as fast as it could.”14
It is important to recognize that bin Laden developed this theory of American weakness during the Clinton years. It was Clinton, after all, who ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Mogadishu. Islamic radicals had a very different view of the United States during the Reagan years. Although Reagan had ordered the pullout of American troops following the 1982 embassy bombing in Beirut, Muslim radicals recognized that Reagan was a strong leader. They witnessed this strength in Reagan’s dealings with the Soviet Union, and a few of them experienced it when Reagan ordered a missile attack against Libyan strongman Muammar Qadafi. Qadafi had been implicated in a terrorist attack on American soldiers at a Berlin disco. America’s retaliatory strike killed several of Qadafi’s close associates as well as one of his sons. So persuasive was Reagan’s military response that it seems to have convinced Qadafi to retire from the terrorism trade.
In Clinton, however, the Islamic radicals seem to have recognized that they were dealing with a different kind of leader. During Clinton’s tenure bin Laden tested his theory of American weakness. He did this by launching a series of attacks on American targets and awaiting the response. These were massive attacks, unprecedented in the damage they inflicted. Yet in every case America reacted either by doing nothing or with desultory counterattacks that did not harm the perpetrators and actually made America look ridiculous in the eyes of the Muslim world. Consequently, bin Laden and Zawahiri concluded that the size and wealth of the American Sodom was no match for the will of the Muslim true believer. They resolved to strike the far enemy in its vital organs, the strike that occurred on 9/11.
Once again, it was the left that urged Clinton to adopt the course that he did. For years, the left’s leading intellectuals had been warning that America’s approach to the Muslim world was driven by hateful and deep-rooted prejudices about Muslims. While such prejudices seemed to be confirmed by the actions of the radical Muslims who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, liberal scholars like Edward Said and John Esposito ridiculed the stereotype of the fanatical Muslim terrorist. Shortly before 9/11, Esposito published a book titled The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? The general conclusion was that the threat was mostly a myth. Said warned that as a result of American ignorance, “The Islamic threat is made to seem disproportionately fearsome.” He poured derision on the idea that “there is a worldwide conspiracy behind every explosion,” a fantasy he attributed to “the menace theory of Islam.”15
The response of Clinton and his advisers to Al Qaeda attacks on American targets was shaped by this left-wing analysis. Recall that many of Clinton’s leading advisers—Warren Christopher, Anthony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger—were retreads from the Carter administration. Their “experience” was largely in screwing up, and now they were going to be presented with another opportunity. In 1993, a group of radical Muslims tried to blow up the World Trade Center. This was the first terrorist a
ttack on American soil. Clinton at the time was preoccupied with his plan to integrate homosexuals into the military. His involvement with the CIA was primarily focused on increasing race and gender diversity in the top ranks of the organization. Consistent with an approach that treated foreign policy as an extension of domestic policy, Clinton treated the World Trade Center attack as an internal political problem. He portrayed the assault not as a hostile action against the United States, but as a kind of humanitarian disaster. Clinton commiserated with the victims—he felt their pain—but he did not say who was responsible for the attack, and he carefully avoided blaming the forces of radical Islam. In fact, he warned against “overreaction.” His advisers persuaded him not to bolster anti-Muslim stereotypes.
In 1996 bin Laden declared war against America. The Clinton administration ignored this threat. That same year radical Muslims detonated a massive bomb at the Khobar Towers military installation in Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen U.S. soldiers. Clinton denounced the attack, but took no action to retaliate. On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda escalated its operations once again, this time launching bomb attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, causing more than two hundred deaths and wounding over four thousand. By this time Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal. Interrupting his efforts to avoid impeachment proceedings, Clinton ordered a halfhearted counterstrike against what turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, and against Al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan that were largely unoccupied. As they witnessed the sorry spectacle of American timidity and incompetence, radical Muslims subjected the United States and its leaders to open derision. One Islamic activist told an Arab television station that he was sending a chastity belt to the White House because if President Clinton could get his sexual appetites under control, “perhaps his aim will improve when he decides to strike the next time.”
But there would not be a next time, even though the attacks on America continued. On October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda orchestrated a suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole, blasting a forty-foot hole in the ship’s hull and killing seventeen sailors. Not since World War II had there been such a lethal assault on an American warship. Striking a heroic pose, Clinton said the attack would not deter America from its efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The absurdity of Clinton’s response can be seen when we recognize that the attack had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the last months of his administration, there were several occasions when Clinton was notified of intelligence reports locating bin Laden. Some Clinton officials argued that the United States should seek to arrest bin Laden but should not try to kill him. Clinton authorized a lethal attack if the opportunity presented itself, but in every case he and his advisers decided not to act. The Clinton team refused to provide arms to Ahmed Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance to enable them to successfully attack bin Laden and his Taliban sponsors. Sandy Berger stressed the intelligence regarding bin Laden’s whereabouts was never 100 percent reliable, and emphasized the high risk of civilian casualties. Janet Reno warned she would not support any attack that was inconsistent with international law. Madeleine Albright said an attack on Muslims might derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Clinton team was ever mindful of the risk of political embarrassment if the operation failed.
Clinton insists that he made every effort to get bin Laden. In a speech in October 2001 Clinton insisted, “I tried to take Bin Laden out the last four years I was in office.” In his September 24, 2006, interview with Chris Wallace, Clinton angrily insisted, “I worked hard to try to kill him” and “came closer than anybody has since.” Clinton cited his terrorism adviser Richard Clarke in support of his efforts. Yet Clarke himself wrote in his book that in the years leading up to 9/11, “I still do not understand why it was impossible to find a competent group…who could locate Bin Laden and kill him.” Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer estimates that the U.S. government missed “about ten chances to capture Bin Laden or kill him.” This point becomes very clear once we recall that from 1996, when bin Laden moved from the Sudan to Afghanistan, until 2000, the year preceding the 9/11 attack, bin Laden was not in deep hiding. Author Steve Coll reports that he lived in a house provided by Mullah Omar near Kandahar. He moved freely through the territories of eastern Afghanistan that were under Taliban control. He talked openly on his satellite phone, calling media representatives in the Middle East and London to dictate statements and issue fatwas. His wives and children were routinely spotted in the local market. “On some Fridays,” Coll writes, “he delivered sermons at Kandahar’s largest mosque.”16 During this period he was interviewed by a number of journalists from around the world. The leftist writer Robert Fisk interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996, as did a British journalist affiliated with the BBC. In late 1996 bin Laden met with the Pakistani reporter Abdel Bari Atwan in Kandahar. Fisk secured another interview with bin Laden in early 1997. In March 1997, bin Laden spoke in person to Peter Arnett of CNN. In early 1998 bin Laden met with John Miller of ABC News. In May 1998 bin Laden held a press conference near Khost in southeastern Afghanistan. Several Pakistani journalists and a Chinese reporter were present. In January 1999 bin Laden granted a personal interview to a journalist affiliated with Time magazine. Isn’t it strange that all these people could find bin Laden but not the Clinton administration?
The obvious reason for Clinton’s failure is that his administration simply did not make the bin Laden mission a top priority. After all, there were other objectives to focus on. Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton were promoting a petition drive organized by the Feminist Majority Foundation to pressure the Taliban to liberalize its position on women’s rights. For others in the administration, the prize target wasn’t bin Laden, it was special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Starr was the political foe the Clinton team really wanted to “get,” and they largely succeeded in discrediting him. Bin Laden was left to concoct other schemes. The conclusion seems unavoidable. The radical Muslims made the decision to attack America on 9/11 because they decided that America was weak. They came to this conclusion as a result of the actions—and inaction—of the Clinton administration and its allies on the left.
SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, there has been a strange and almost fanciful debate about measures taken by the Bush administration to prevent another such attack. The 9/11 attacks confirmed America’s extreme vulnerability. From the moment they occurred, it has been evident that such an attack could happen again, with even worse consequences. America is a big, open, and porous society. Every year some 60 million people enter the country on flights, and more than 100 million people come by land or sea. America offers a virtually limitless supply of potential targets: population centers, sports arenas, theme parks, power plants, water supply systems, electricity grids, tunnels, bridges, and computer networks. Virtually any group of determined people possessing weapons and skills, and willing to give their lives, could wreak havoc. One might expect all Americans to rally behind a concentrated effort to protect the homeland by locating the bad guys, arresting them, holding them, and extracting information from them. One might expect this, but one would be wrong.
From the outset, the left has led a campaign to oppose the administration’s most important measures to avoid another terrorist attack. The left’s campaign has been spearheaded by radical groups like the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Listening to the left, one almost gets the impression that September 11 never happened. Indeed many on the left portray the United States government, not Al Qaeda, as the gravest threat to American citizens. In this view, bin Laden might detonate an occasional explosion, but Bush is plotting to deprive all Americans of their basic liberties. Author Gore Vidal even suggests that the Bush administration has largely concocted its terror warnings as part of a scheme to establish martial control over America. The same note is struck by Joe Conason, who claims that America is now operating under “a nascent military regime.” Writing in Harpe
r’s, Lewis Lapham detects nothing less than “the hallmarks of fascist sentiment in the character of the American government.”17
So powerful is the left’s solicitude for civil liberties that Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean even suggested that the United States should not presume bin Laden’s guilt until he had been given the opportunity to have a fair trial. Radical lawyer Ramsey Clark agreed to defend Saddam Hussein in court on the grounds that the U.S. government had “demonized” him before giving him an impartial hearing. Activist lawyer Lynne Stewart, a veteran of militant causes in America, chose to represent the blind sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman. Although Stewart portrayed Rahman as a noble soul exercising his free speech rights and the U.S. government as a malevolent institution motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice, Rahman was found guilty of plotting several terrorist bombings in America. Stewart herself was arrested and convicted of conspiracy when she was caught transmitting clandestine messages from the blind sheikh to his radical acolytes. Apparently moved by her plight, philanthropist George Soros contributed $20,000 to Stewart’s defense.18
The Stewart case illustrates the symbiotic relationship between liberals and the far left. Leftists like Stewart stake out the extreme position and their allies like Soros provide political cover. This is not to say that liberal concerns about civil liberties are insincere. They are not, and in some cases they may be valid. Many libertarians and some conservatives have raised similar concerns. The critics stress that Bush should go after the bad guys only in a way that protects their constitutional rights. If not, the rights of all Americans are jeopardized. We have here an echo of the ACLU’s credo that rights are best protected at their extreme. If the Bush administration is forced to release a man accused of building a “dirty bomb” on the grounds that he was denied access to a lawyer, then the rest of us are more secure in our liberties. Whether this is true or not, it is based on the assumption that the freed suspect would not proceed to build and then detonate such a bomb. In that case many thousands of Americans would be manifestly less secure in life and liberty.
The Enemy At Home Page 25