This material was drawn from a variety of sources that have not been cited. It is not
meant for publication, but merely for thought and consideration by interested readers.
September 11 Presentation
Introduction
The basic facts are well known. Nineteen men, apparently under the immediate
direction of on Mohamed Atta, booked a trip 4 long distance flights; long distance
because they would be loaded with aviation fuel (20,000 gallons; burns at 3,000
degrees; steel begins to soften at 800 degrees, loses half its strength at 1,200 degrees
and melts at 2,700 degrees; investigators concluded that sustained temperatures never
got about 1,450 degrees but clips in the girders began to pop and started a domino
effect where floor structures began to fall onto floor structures; most floor weight was
handled by support beams which transfered the weight into the ground and they just
couldnt handle full weight of the higher floors hitting the lower floors in a mass fashion).
Several of the men had been trained as pilots, several in hand to hand combat. Shortly
after the flights departed, the men breached the minimal security devices that were in
place and took over the controls of the planes. They then turned the planes around and
headed for various targets:
American #77 - 64 aboard; left Dulles headed to and flew in to the Pentagon
American #11- 92 aboard; left Boston headed for Los Angeles and flew into the North
World Trade Tower (#1) at 8:46 am; down at 10:28 am
United #175 - 65 aboard; left Boston headed for and flew into the South
World Trade Tower (#2) at 9:03 am; down at 9:59 am
United #93 - 45 aboard; left Newark headed for San Francisco and headed toward
D.C.; passengers attacked the attackers and brought the plane down in rural
Pennsylvania about 80 miles from D.C.; had only four hijackers while the rest had five;
5th was probably Ramzi Omar of Yemen who could not get a visa to get into the U.S.
It does now appear that at least one other flight (on route to Dallas) had a team of
terrorists aboard, but when all planes were grounded, the planed landed in St. Louis and
the apparent/would be attackers walked away. They have since been apprehended.
Some 123 were killed at the Pentagon, which suffered roughly $1 billion in damage.
Some 3,000 were killed in the Trade Towers (only 1 and 2 were hit but 8 buildings in all
came down, including a Marriott Hotel, and others severely damaged), with a still
uncalculated cost - $50 billion. But the real cost is the fear, which is more than $50
billion. Enron, WordCom, Kenneth Lay inflicted far more financial damage to the
economy than did bin Laden and Al-Qaida. What bin Laden did was bring fear to the
forfront. Now true, Enron yielded a certain measure of fear too, but a different kind of
fear - an investment fear, not the life theatening fear of terrorism. Terrorism puts sand
into the gears of cross-border connectivity and the results threaten the increasingly
frictionless world of globalization. The integration of global markets in goods, capital
and labor could grind to a halt as the open economy is replaced by a security state. It is
hoped that the mentality with which Americans are responding to September 11 will
prove to be a valley from which the U.S. economy will climb, not a peak from which it will
fall. Battle of the Little Big Horn analogy (some European transplants in New England
actually returned to Europe, fearful of an Indian take over subsequent to the events of
June 1876) - beginning of the end; 20 more years of fighting, but the end result is
inevitable.
Some Further Thoughts, By The Numbers
1. End of the 20th Century (the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine - REM)
The 20th century was ushered in, I would suggest, on June 28, 1914 when a very sane
and rational terrorist, Gavrilo Princip (Bosnian by birth but acting in conjunction with a
group of Serbian revolutionaries), sacrificed his life to assassinate the arrogant and
audacious Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand. That act set in motion a series of events that
led to World War I, a retreat into trade protectionism, which was the end of the world as
they knew it at that time, at least the end of western world. The aristocracies were
dismantled, provincial territorialism began to erode, many broke out of the economic
lockstep that had engulfed Europeans for centuries. The 21st century was ushered in on
September 11 when 19 very sane and rational terrorists sacrificed their lives to kill and
terrorize what they saw as arrogant and audacious brazen Americans. That act has set
in motion a series of events that may not be the end of the world as we know it, but it will
certainly change it.
It was inevitable - World War I that is. The Ferdinand assassination simply sparked the
inevitable. September 11 was inevitable as well. Our economic convergence theory
has been working very well - in The Soviet Union, in China, India, South America. Open
up markets, allow consumption, build highways and byways, allow a middle class to
develop and their interests will converge with ours, democracy will get a foothold, and
war will be averted. Western civilization/Christianity is clearing dominating. India and
China, with their alternative cultures, are accepting cultural osmosis in exchange for
commodities. Only way to turn the world green is to engage in a campaign of mutually
assured destruction, an apocalyptic obliteration campaign. Like the phoenix of Greek
mythology, the Islamic state will emerge from the ashes. It is an ethos of enmity that
has the potential of unimaginable destructive capacity. Economic convergence theory is
not working withing fundamentalist Islam, in large part due to the fact that fundamentalist
Islam has not tasted the honey of capitalism. They have seen it, by have not tasted of
it. India and China have, and have become intoxicated. We need to export the idea,
and export it quickly.
In the recent China-Taiwan saber rattling, for example, the Chinese government run by
old men bellowed we will go to war, but the now powerful business community set them
down and said now way you foolish old me. We will solve this and get on with the
business of making money). But the message of peace through social and economic
convergence has not infiltrated the Arabic peninsula, for many reasons. As Rudyard
Kipling noted years ago, east is east and west is west and never the two shall meet.
Newsweek ran a lead article last February about the Growing Islamic Fire, and there
have been many editorials on the subject appearing in major American papers since.
But we as a populous let it pass, and we have been blissfully, if not purposefully ignorant
of our actions and their impact on the Muslim world, and must now face a most difficult
future of uncertainty and anxiety. The watchwords I believe of the new century.
2. Terrorism in America
America has been largely spared the ravages of terrorism, the Oklahoma City bombing
the major exception. And yet, even that episode pales in comparison to the events of
last month - 168 dead in Oklahoma City vs. some 3,000 dead as a result of activities of
September 11. We would have to go back to the American Civil War (1861-1865) and
the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg to see an episode of mass violent death on
American soil of the same magnitude as we saw on September 11. We do not have a
social-cultural tolerance for terrorism, and the events of September 11 have had, and
will continue to have a marked impact on the American people. I do wish to be a cynic
for a moment however. I know of an activity, a violent, irresponsible activity that costs
American 4 times as many lives each year and causes $110 billions in annual damage,
and yet interestingly, we seem to tolerate it. In contrast, I know of some countries that
do not even begin to tolerate this activity among its people, but have moved into a
tolerance mode with respect to terrorism. Quite odd. The activity in question....DWI.
Interestingly, Ireland tends to tolerate its perpetual terroristic violence and yet does not
even begin to allow drunk driving. We in America are the other way around. Drunk
drivers in America this year will kill some 20,000 people; four times the number killed on
September 11. We tolerate the drunk driver, yet we declare war on those who killed
3,000 and mobilize all manner of agencies and officers in response. Interesting. I spent
two years in the Philippines in the early 1970s, six months of which was spent in a war
zone of sorts where terrorism/fire fights were common events and literally accepted as a
part of life. I returned again last year, and saw much the same level of cultural
acceptance. The people there simply accept terrorism as a part of daily life, much to the
same degree that we tolerate/live with drunk drivers. Interesting cultural and historical
dimensions to this things we call terrorism.
3. Purpose of Terrorism
The primary purpose of terrorism is not to kill, maim and destroy. Those are the means
to the end. The primary purpose of the terrorist is to terrorize, to demoralize, to
undermine public confidence in the governments ability to be able to maintain social
peace. Terrorism is the only weapon our enemies can use against us at this point.
They cannot take us on politically or economically or militarily in a head-on confrontation.
But they can engage in rather effective damage campaigns because as an industrialized
nation, we have so many vulnerable choke points. In return, the bin Laden group and
the Taliban have few if any choke points, and we are now left to bombing what is in
essence rubble. Consider this email I received a few days after the attacks, written by
an American Afghani, Tamim Ansary.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the
Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their
schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their
infrastructure? Done. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late.
Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier
bombs.
4. Role of the Media
The media contributes to the terrorism problem. Their legitimate reporting efforts result
in heightened public awareness of terroristic episodes, thus magnifying the terror and
enhancing the aforementioned demoralizing and civic undermining dimensions. The
escalation activity in which all terrorist groups must engage in order to stay on the media
radar screen is most troublesome - no terrorist group is going to get media coverage
and thus achieve its desired terroristic effect unless it raises the level of destruction
above that which was done last time. By reporting, the media forces the terrorists to
continually raise the intensity. Just what role the media SHOULD play in all of this is an
interesting topic in and of itself. Should there be restrictions placed on them. Should
they be required to under-report casualties and damages. That is exactly what both
Roosevelt and Churchill did with the press during the second world war (Churchill was
scared to death that the people would panic if they learned of the actual devastation
caused by the V-2 rockets). This matter will have to be postponed to another day.
5. Office of Homeland Security
There is now an Office of Homeland Security; a new cabinet-level federal office, which
will seek to decouple the inevitable future terroristic episodes from the goal of striking
terror in the general populous. There are some 40 federal agencies involved in these
activities, with the counter-terrorism czar (Tom Ridge) given the daunting task of trying
to coordinate those efforts.
6. Renewed Role for Big Government
I saw a cartoon recently. Picture #1 showed a fat rich boy bad-mouthing big
government. Big government is bad, big government is evil. Picture #2 shows a
scared, fat rich boy turning to big government with a pathetic gesture....HELP he cries
out. Indeed, you will not hear the big government is bad theme for sometime, perhaps
the rest of your lives. We may have needed a cause, a national purpose with the great
monolithic threat of communism gone for there was nothing out there to galvanize us to
action. We were floundering about with partisan bickering over surpluses and publicly
debating the sexual habits of our leaders. The papers were full of the trite and the
trivial, but no more. This is, as implied, the end of the triumph of economics. That is not
to say that the economy will not remain central to our society. But the idea that politics
and government were unimportant died September 11. Around the world, we are going
to see governments become more important, more powerful, more intrusive. That may
not please civil libertarians, but it will not matter. The state is back for the oldest reason
on the books - security. In the classic philosophic battle between liberty and order, order
will the order of the day for years to come. Rights we have de facto had extended to us
in this 50 year era of judicial activism will likely now begin to be eroded. Among other
obvious changes, police powers of search and seizure are going to be greatly expanded;
Mapp which has already become eroded, will likely be swept away into historical
oblivion.
7. Communist Challenge Comparison
I wish to take you back in time. A generation or two ago, the great monolithic threat to
the US was communism, just as we were the great monolithic threat to them. It was a
bi-lateral threat; each challenging the other. Capitalism and communism were
competing around the globe for the hearts and minds of humanity. The Communists
promoted a political, social and economic model to the world, and it was most enticing.
A number of countries bought into it. We realized early on that one of our chief missions
was to discredit communism, lessen its appeal around the world, and promote our
message instead. The Soviets, of course, engaged in the same tactics - discrediting
ours and promoting theirs. Both at times used a certain measure of belligerence (ie.,
military action) to get the message across. It can historically be said that we, more than
the Soviets, also used a number of what might be called softer methods in this Cold
War era. Militarily, thank goodness, the Cold War was a standoff - we came close, but
there never was a nuclear war between us. But because of the cost of maintaining that
position of military equilibrium, AND because of our very effective soft efforts (political
and social initiatives) to discredit their message and promote ours (ie. Radio Free
Europe, exchange of scholars, government and business personnel, and other
Convergence Theory activities), the Soviet Union and its message failed.
In this current scenario, the political/philosophic threat tends to not be bi-lateral, but uni-
lateral; just one way - the Islamic message is not a threat to the Western World. The
West is not going to adopt the quasi-feudal, aristocratic, confining message of Islam.
Rather our political, social, economic model is a threat to them. There is an attempt
being made to export the radical Islamic message to the mainstream Islamic world. So
unlike the days of the communist threat, our task now not so much to make sure that
radical Islam is seen as attractive to the West, but to make sure that radical Islam is not
seen as attractive option around the Muslim world, and to then try and extinguish it
where it is currently rooted.
No matter how successful the military strategy, I believe that ultimately this Islamic war
will be won or lost on these socio-economic, political grounds. I applaud the food drops,
for example, but those are short term (even though we have been giving Afghanistan
food for many years now - third on our list at 304,010 tons/year; Ethiopia #1, North
Korea #2). Our efforts need to become more encompassing and substantial. Education
and economic assistance must be part of our arsenal. Inadequate public-education
system, for example, encourages poor families to send their children to extremist
religious schools where the children are taught to view fighting as a religious duty. We
need to root out the guns and eliminate the drug production culture that is so much a
part of the Afghan social fabric. You see, by financing and training the Afghan
mujahedin during the Soviet War, we ended up leaving the region awash with guns,
drugs and extremists seeking new jihads to right. It is our interest and their interests to
give these young people real social, political and economic opportunities.
We need to engage in long-term diplomatic ventures and information campaigns aimed
at reassuring Afghan, Arab and Islamic people that the US respects their religion and
culture, wishes them to develop and prosper and will help them economically without
expecting them to abandon their root beliefs. That is the party line anyway. The
problem is, that while this may be our stated and even our honest, heart-felt intention,
the impact of our interaction, as bin Laden accurately points out, will be a creeping
erosion of the traditional Islamic culture and an eventual marginalization of that way of
life (see the history of the impact of the western culture on most any indigenous groups
as case studies; ie., Native Americans, African tribes, Maori of New Zealand, Aborigines
of Australia, etc., etc., etc.,). Western culture does in fact tend to steamroll alternative
cultures, not so much with an iron fist, but with the velvet glove of seduction. And that is
what bin Laden and many in the Islamic community are really fighting. None the less, it
must be stressed that battalions of soldiers and coalitions of diplomats are not the sole
way to drain the pools of zealotry, poverty and alienation in which terrorism flourishes.
Much more is needed - significant economic assistance, cultural exchanges, religious
dialogue if we wish to realize religious harmony and an establishment of respect for
human values within the Middle East culture.
8. Animosity Toward America
As implied in point #7, and really the core of my presentation this evening, is to
emphasize at some risk of redundance, that there is a significant measure of animosity
held toward America on the part of many in the Muslim faith; a feeling reflected not just
by the Islamic fringe, but also by a large proportion of those who are in the Islamic
mainstream. Success in this matter begins with a grasp of cultural differences, and
there are many. There is simply an image among many in the Islamic world that
America is an evil empire.
As you know, many Palestinians danced in the streets upon hearing that Islamic
terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thousands of
Muslims have demonstrated. Theyve burned American flags, raised clenched fists and
held aloft banners telling the world what they think of the USA (Newsweek 7/22/02
reported that in October 2001 the Saudi intelligence agency conducted a poll among
men aged 25 - 41. Some 95 percent said they approved of bin Ladens cause.
Fortunately said one Saudi official, this is not a democracy). I am currently in email
correspondence with a Pakistani journalist, a most rational and articulate individual who
harbors these same feelings. I read of a poster that appeared at a recent
demonstration: Americans, think! Why does the whole world hate you? The hatred
isnt universal, of course, and many Muslims abhor violence and condemn the attacks.
Most Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness that should not be
associated with acts of violence against the innocent.
But beyond that, the reason hatred and resentment exists in one degree or another
among many Muslims in the Arab world, lies in a complicated web of U.S. policy,
repressive foreign regimes, poverty, religious fundamentalism and, even, American
naivete. Islamic fundamentalists view the United States as a source of moral pollution
and pernicious temptation for their own children, and a threat to the medieval,
hierarchical faith they fanatically and frantically embrace and impose. There is
resentment over U.S. economic, military, and political power. There is disgust from
many in the male-dominated Muslim world over the strong role women play in America
and the suggestive way they dress. They add on top of all that the way the U.S., not
only in its role as a military superpower but perhaps even more importantly as a cultural
hyperpower, dominates the world, crushing religious and cultural institutions that have
existed for thousands of years.
We should note that Muslims in the Middle East arent the only ones expressing concern
over American values and policies. At recent summits of world leaders, there have been
violent protests aimed at U.S. and Western policies on the environment, trade and
foreign aid. Pope John Paul II has spoken frequently about his concern for the spread
of U.S.-style capitalism and culture around the world.
By the same token, many in the Islamic world seek to participate in that global economy,
wish to have access to our markets and our goods. The situation has left much of the
Muslim world in a state of disarray. Pakistan symbolizes the complicated crosscurrents
in the Muslim world. President Pervez Musharraf, a Western-educated general who
wants foreign investment for his poor nation, and condemned the terrorist attacks and
vowed to support the United States at the same time knows that many in his Muslim
country harbor strong dislike for the USA. He has tried to steer a middle course.
This is not a battle with Osama bin Laden per se, but a conflict with the core of
mainstream Islamic culture. I lived in the Philippines last year and spent time on the
Island of Mindanao and visited with mainstream Muslims, as well as members (or
alleged members) of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf - a group with bin Laden ties. I
visited with Muslims in mosques in Mindanao, in southern Malaysia, in Singapore, and
the very clear theme is that they dont like us. While there are no justifications for the
acts of September 11, there are a number of issues that have stirred resentment among
many in the Muslim world:
A. Israel and the Palestinians. Despite many attempts to be a mediator, the United
States still is perceived by Muslims to have unfairly provided years of unwavering
support for Israel, and perhaps rightly so. Our over-the-top willingness to supply
Israel with military hardware is particularly troublesome and strikes a sensitive
cord throughout the Muslim world, even in countries far from the Middle East.
The collapse of peace talks last year and the election of conservative Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon earlier this year have fed the agitation. Interestingly,
the three wars in which the US participated in the 1990s involved American
support of Muslims - Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosov. In the minds of the mainstream
Muslims, however, that does not seem to counter, our continued support of Israel
and the fact that our readily supplied military hardware is being used to kill scores
of Palesinians.
B. U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Placed there just before the Gulf War with Saudi
Arabias blessing to protect the nation and to server as a staging point for taking
back Kuwait, the troops have never left. Their presence inflames extremists and
troubles even moderate Muslims who regard the country as holy ground because
it is the birthplace of Islam, and has given bin Laden a crucial rallying cry; in
1996, you remember, his followers bombed the American military barracks there
in Dhahran, killing 19 servicemen.
C. U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Iran. Such
sanctions, aimed at states the United States says have sponsored or harbored
terrorists, have centered almost entirely on Muslim countries. For Americans,
there is a tendency to paint all Muslims with the same broad brush, but to
Muslims, these countries are different-and in some cases even enemies. To the
average Muslim in the street, it appears the U.S. is targeting them. The fact that
the Iraqi sanctions have done little to harm Saddam Hussein but have resulted in
the starvation of the Iraqi children in the streets only serves to aggravate this
problem.
D. U.S. support of repressive Middle East regimes, feudal monarchies, and corrupt
corporate officials. For fear of alienating strategic allies and disrupting the flow of
oil, the United States (the alleged champion of justice and liberty) generally
ignores serious abuses of civil rights by Arabic rulers in countries friendly to us.
The reality is that we are propping up a number of parasite-prince regimes in the
Middle East so that the oil will continue to flow, knowing full well that the leaders
of those nations are squandering the oil wealth of their nations in the fleshpots of
the west, which in turn serves to perpetuate the dismal socio-economic conditions
in their respective nations. Interestingly, in many ways we are contributing to the
perpetuation of the socio-economic squalor in the Islamic world upon which
terrorism thrives. We also tend to be very callous toward corporate misconduct.
When 5,000 are killed and thousands more are injured in Bophal, India by Union
Carbide recklessness, we turn our heads. If 3,000 are killed in New York, we go
to war. There is a very definitive lack of consistency in our foreign policy in the
Middle East.
E. U.S. military tactics. The long-distance missile strikes on Iraq, in particular, have
caused resentment. President Bush calls attacks on the United States cowardly,
but from the Mideast viewpoint surgical long distance bombing is cowardly. To
Iraqis, the death of civilians and the destruction of the countrys infrastructure
from bombing during the 1991 Gulf War and attacks since then, as well as from
economic sanctions by Western countries, constitute terrorism.
These are the five active concerns. Now, there are also a number of what we might
call passive concerns that we alluded to earlier. While our stated and even believed
intention is simply to engage in trade and commerce, the impact of that interaction, as
bin Laden accurately points out, will be a creeping erosion of the traditional Islamic
culture and an eventual marginalization of that way of life. Western culture does in fact
tend to steamroll alternative cultures, not so much with an iron fist, but with the velvet
glove of seduction. Western culture is in fact infiltrating Islamic culture. We pollute their
culture and countries with drugs, alcohol, abortions, blasphemous books, filthy
magazines, dirty movies, hellish music that captures and corrupts their young. The
Islamic clerics certainly preach against it, but Western culture is most intoxicating, and
they are losing the culture war. There is inevitably going to be an osmosis, a cultural
assimiliation, a melding our of cultures, and many in the Islamic world are absolutely
horrified by this prospect and wish to keep Islam pure. So we see not only concerns
about our overt actions (support of Israel, troops in Saudi Arabia, etc), but even greater
concerns about the encroachment of decadent western culture, of post-modernism into
the Islamic culture. As I view the matter, this is the root issue; this loads in the highest
in our multiple regression model.
We are now locked in a culture war that was inevitable, and one that only the historians,
not the politicians, will be able to tell us when it is over, and that will be many
decades/many generations from now. It is an inevitable cross-cultural, multi-lateral
assimiliation, an artifact of the global economy. It is a cross fertilization that has the
potential to enrich all cultures (though the fundamentalists of all faiths may view it as a
cross pollution). I do wish to stress this point - we are now locked in a cultural war that
only the historians will be able to tell when it was finally over. Interestingly, the other
great civilizations of our time (China and India) do not have a culture of religious zealotry
and have in fact embraced many of the fundamental concepts of western capitalism and
western culture, and have actively sought to become an active partner in the global
economy. The result will be a continued melding of those cultures with ours over time -
classic cultural assimilation, each taking ideas, words, foods, philosophies from the
other and incorporating them into their own social, economic and religious institutions.
Again, many in the Islamic world do not wish to move in that direction and are resisting.
When you add their concerns regarding our overt actions to their concerns about our
subtle cultural encroachments, and throw in crushing poverty, we can to some extent
see why they have and will continue now to lash out at us.
Let me emphasize and re-emphasize that Mr. bin Laden is not the enemy per se.
Rather he is an emissary with a message that resonates well in the Muslim community.
The real enemy is a fluid, illusive yet very real anti-Western/anti-American sentiment
that has been built up to effervescent proportions in the Arabian states. Killing bin
Laden will simply make him a martyr, for two will pick up the mantle after he falls. In
killing him, we meet his goal of a world war between Islam and the west. The enemy if
you will is a broad-based sense of a rather well-founded animosity towards America and
its policies. A combination of American actions, fundamentalist teachings which include
a definitive aversion to cultural assimilation, and socio-economic conditions have made
a large pool of young men susceptible to the message. I would suggest that extremists
thrive on festering conflicts, and they flourish when economies collapse and when states
fail to provide basic services.
How we attack that enemy will require a significant measure of thought and deliberation,
and years of concerted effort on many fronts, the most important being the political,
social and economic. I plead with our leaders to move with some caution in this present
campaign, and maintain a focused awareness of the larger context, lest we end up
literally taking on the entire Islamic world and reap perpetual mutually assured retaliation
- truly an apocalyptic scenario.
Asks Sheik Abdullah Shami, leader of the militant Muslim group, Islamic Jihad, in Gaza:
Is America too stupid to understand that these attacks are coming upon it because we,
as Muslims, resent the way it conducts business? I pity its naivete. Its not just that
Muslims are offended - they are humiliated by American policy. Nourishing these
grievances are extremist, fundamentalist groups such as bin Ladens. They play off the
growing disparity between wealthy and poor nations. They preach messages of hell and
damnation for the encroaching popular culture of the freewheeling West. To bin Laden
and others like him, the teachings in Islams holy Koran permit a holy war, or jihad,
aimed at ridding the world of non-Islamic influences. Anti-Americanism becomes a tool
for strengthening their power, experts say.
Bin Laden and leaders of such groups point to the way Americans live as reason
enough for hating the USA. In Afghanistan, under a strict interpretation of the Koran,
women must reveal nothing more than their eyes in public. Drinking alcohol is
forbidden. Girls arent educated. It is a mans world. The USA, where sex is used to
sell everything from shampoo to cigarettes, is portrays as a land of evil. America is seen
as this very glittery place, and its easy to portray it as a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Many in the Islamic world view the US as a source of moral pollution and pernicious
temptation, and a major threat to the faith that they embrace.
And one that plays well to a generation of Muslims growing up with few civil rights or
comforts and yet aware of the free sexuality and material wealth of the West. Frustrated
by inept or repressive leadership in their own countries and facing a hopeless future,
many but into anti-American sentiment, and some but into the extremist groups
themselves.
The level of wealth in the U.S. and the western world in general is so much more visible
on poor countries now, through television, movies. There is this profound sense of
being left out. These are people who dont have a hope of ever getting out of this
poverty, and so they are willing to do something desperate. What were now witnessing
is the terrible maturing of the resentment by these people who have been unable to
realize their goals for decades, who feel entrapped and who are hunting for a way to
inflict pain on their perceived enemies.
9. Lack of a Negotiation Culture
The problem is compounded due to the fact that negotiation and reasoned discussion is
just not a part of the formula at present for many in the Islamic world, particularly the
fundamentalists who don't want American to change, but rather want America to die.
There is no demand list, no suggestions of how we should change, what we should do.
It is more of what we would call an unfocused hatred, an aimless rage. They simply
want us to go away and die. In our naivete, we Americans were, in the aggregate, quite
surprised that anyone held us in such contempt. Many fundamentalist Muslims have
basically adopted what we in the west would call an anarchist, nihilist perspective.
Many, particularly in Afghanistan are truly a bloodthirsty lot, trapped in a web of ancient
hatred. Modern Islam in general has become a mixture of politics, religion and rage.
The eyes are blurred and the minds are numbed with irrational fundamentalist religiously
rooted political perspectives. They want to destroy all that there is in the west and for
God, who is standing by even at the gates, to start a new world with the scraps of the
old, very much like the classical phoenix of Greek mythology.
10. A Need to Re-Examine our Israeli Aid Policies
This is a most sacred cow, and the fact that the matter is even being broached on the
public policy stage cause the Israeli Prime Minister to recently proclaim that he would not
allow Israel to become another Czechoslovakia (referring to the ill-fated Munich Pact of
1938, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler appeasement policy; peace in our time; England and
German agreed to give Germany roughly 1/3 of Czechoslovakia yet Czechoslovakia not
even consulted; imagine England and the US talking today and just deciding that
England can now have 1/3 of France, and if England is strong enough to take it, then it
is done; Germany was strong enough to take Czechoslovakia [who was told by England
not to resist], and that was that; so much for sovereignty! This is the vocal concern of
the current Israeli Prime Minister, that we, to obtain peace, may be willing to sacrifice
them, and he is saying, we will not be a Czechoslovakia and simply tuck our tail and let
it happen). This is an emperor wears no clothes topic, and there are some very
accurate yet painful truths here. The fact that the U.S. provides financial support to
Israel, a relatively wealthy country, makes no sense. The fact that we give them some
$4billion/year in primarily military aid is wrong. If some other country engaged in the
acts that Israel engages in, we would brand them a terrorist state and probably try to go
after them militarily, or at least try to overthrow their government. The political reality in
America is that the second strongest political action group in the U.S. is the Israeli lobby
(AAUP is #1; NRA is #2 or #3). That said, there are a growing number of voices arguing
for a cessation of foreign aid to Israel. Those who do so literally make themselves
vulnerable to all manner of attacks, even physical attack by two particular Jewish
terrorist groups who operate in the U.S. (and they are groups that we have legally
identified as terrorist organizations) - the Kach and the Kahane Chai.
11. Military action
We have begun the military operations, and perhaps rightly so. But I fear that military
action will result in perpetual mutually assured retaliation. I fear that we will win the war
and then have to shift into a nation-building mode. That is not very easy. Social
engineering is a vastly underdeveloped art. The U.S. tends to greatly overestimate its
ability to bring democracy and development to countries with little experience with either.
A Marshall Plan sounds like a great idea, until one recalls that it worked in Europe
largely because the societies involved had previously been fully developed and
modernized, had highly education people and were very keen to become industrialized
societies again. Thus we could lift them up so they could walk on their own two feet
again. Afghans have nothing of this sort to stand on. Jumping a society from the Stone
Age to even a relatively modern one is a daunting task. Democracy is a plant that is
exceedingly difficult to export and thrives in very few parts of the world. Being a
superpower refers to our military ability, not our social-engineering ability. We have tried
our hand at social-engineering in Vietnam, in Nicaragua, in Somalia, in Haiti, in Iran.
Weve been trying it in Bosnia and Kosovo for the last few years, and have yet to
resolve its intricacies.
Let us take the case of Afghanistan - to whom are we going to turn to rule Afghanistan;
the Pashtun (also called the Pathan - the dominant southern tribe which makes up about
40 percent of Afghanistan and has many of its tribe living in Pakistan; split into factions
in the 1970s though it joined forces to fight the Soviets; some joined the Taliban in the
1990s, some stayed independent, some joined the Northern Alliance), the Northern
Alliance (an alliance of five northern tribes; three prominent groups the Tajik, the Uzbek
and the Hazara; leader is now Buhanuddin Rabbani, now that Ahmad Massoud has
been killed just weeks before the 9/11 attack)!!! These are nasty groups dominated by
war lords whose corruption, brutality and incompetence made the Taliban (which was
more like a spiritual movement than a government; they did little more than enforce
Islamic piety) seem like the lessor two evils when it seized power in 1996. The Afghan
people have been praying that god save them from the Taliban, but not at the cost of
bringing back the tribal war lords. The Pashtun and the Northern Alliance are full of gun
running, drug dealing, brutal folks. They know nothing of the art of governing/ruling, and
will most certainly continue to engage in terrorism after being installed, for that is all
they know. War is their way of life. They are the products of fighting. The key is that
they will most certainly not engage in external terrorism, but they will surely make life
rough internally - see the story of the SAVAK in Iran for a likely scenario. Any way you
paint this, it is not neat and clean. As one writer noted recently, the Afghan situation is
going to be like squaring a circle. My take is that Afghanistan will deteriorate into chaos,
with various factions fighting one another. The sad fact of history is that people stop
fighting only when they are tired of the bloodshed and not when some external force
calls timeout and seeks to act as referee. I read that the only order that will stick in
Afghanistan will arise once the parties have finished duking it out with each other.
I hope that we use restraint. I hope that we do not enter into a variety of packs with the
devil that will only complicate matters in the future. It appears that we have tied in with
Uzbekistan, a country with a horrible human rights record, but we need their military
bases. We have done this before, only to reap problems down the road. I recently saw
cartoon that shows a Taliban leader shrugging his shoulders while speaking to an
American CIA leader with the caption - dont blame us, you made him! Indeed we did,
specifically training and financing bin Laden, but in the broader context, our previous
attempt to free Afghanistan from the Soviets led directly tot he creation, arming and
eventual victory of the oppressive, terrorist-harboring Taliban.
We can learn from the British and their Ireland experience. In the early 1970's, the
British interned suspected terrorists without trial. Later, they took to shooting IRA men
as they drove along quiet country back lanes. Both measures were effective in the
short term, although inevitably innocent people were imprisoned and the wrong person
assassinated. Ultimately, though, they served only to polarize public opinion, making
zealots out of the moderate majority.
So while I understand a lust for revenge, it worries me that just as the IRA complained
accurately about repression every time the Brits fouled up (and obtained new recruits as
a result), so I believe Osama bin Laden is willing to see the Great Satan make errors.
That will provide him with the opportunity to legitimately complain and attract more
followers. He seems to almost want to die - public suffering at times is the only antidote
to injustice and oppression. He seems to be willing to adopt the Baader-Meinhoff model
of courting an overly aggressive response from the government, which in turn will attract
large numbers of adherents to take on that evil, repressive government. There are 1
billion Muslims in the world, most of whom would not even give bin Laden the time of
day at present. But one veiled woman manhandled at a military checkpoint, one smart
bomb accidentally landing in the middle of a crowded market square, and we could
suddenly find ourselves facing a billion angry soldiers.
Eventually, the British changed tactics. They did not escalate their response every time
they were provoked. Rather, they swapped information with the Irish police and reached
extradition agreements with the Dublin government. They recruited paid informers
(including some of this planets vilest scum) and infiltrated agents into the IRA. Armed
with precise intelligence, British commandos were able to uncouple the IRA cells.
Meanwhile, television images of severed British limbs and grieving British orphans
persuaded a few of the deluded romantics abroad who had financed the IRA to close
their wallets.
Even if Osama bin laden surrenders tomorrow, the real war - the war for hearts and
minds - will still take decades to win.
More military options will be forthcoming, and after Afghanistan we will likely focus on
Syria (though I predict that when faced with military action the Syrian government will
turn over its terrorists), but we need to begin to emphasize non-military options as well.
As noted previously, the war will ultimately be won or lost on the soft soil - political,
social and economic grounds.
12. Irrational Religious Extremism
What mainstream culture classifies as religious extremism, is obviously not viewed as
extreme by the members of such groups. External classifications of extreme behavior
is in fact quite rational behavior within the context of these groups. The raid on the
Trade Towers was entirely rational from the perspective of the Al Queda philosophy, as
were the actions of the David Koresh group in Waco, Texas. Religion can drive people
to do terrible things. The greatest evils that have ever been wrought in this world have
been in the name of God and justice. Read the moving account Synanon (by Richard
Ofshe), and how normal people became motivated to engage in unspeakable acts.
Consider the actions of the members of Peoples Temple, the group who voluntarily
drank cyanide laced kool aid and even administered it to their children. These latter
three episodes were examples of Christian extremism. Muslims certainly do not have a
monopoly on such actions. Many have noted that religion has two sides - a unifying side
that transcends national and religious boundaries, and a divisive side that is all about
boundaries; to be a Muslim is to NOT be a Jew, to be a Protestant is NOT to be a
Catholic, to be a Hindu is NOT to be a Muslim. Extremists in all religions emphasize the
divisive aspects, and the result is, from the mainstream perspective, unfocused hatred
and irrational horror.
13. The Spreading Islamic Fire
As far as Bin Laden is concerned, his bombing of the Nairobi and Dar embassies was a
mistake and cost him a significant measure of public support. His bombing of the USS
Cole put him back in the good graces of the even the mainstream Islamic community.
But beyond these little episodes, Bin Laden is tapping into what has been semi-dormant,
but a very real fire that burns in the middle east, and that is pan-Islamism, vigorously
promoted a generation ago by then Egyptian President Nasser. The whole of the globe
belongs to Allah and the whole of Allahs law has to be executed on the globe. Theres
the American New World Order, and the world order as articulated in the Koran. Bin
Laden has developed a 100 year plan that turns not only the middle east green (drive
Americans and Jews out of the Islamic world), but turns the world map green (the
Islamic religions traditional color). He has revived the spirit of Hassan ben Sabbah by
saying that it is an individual duty for Muslims to kill Americans (civilian and military),
wherever they are found. He makes no secret of the fact that he is interested in
fomenting a revolution and that his new regime would rule in accordance with the pure
precepts of the Prophet Muhammad. I do not believe he seeks martyrdom, but rather
fancies himself as a grand caliph in the charge of a worldwide Islamic theocracy.
The more moderate voices in the Islamic community are not in line with bin Ladens
tactics, but do share his vision of a world dominated by Allah. They are outraged and
repulsed at the creeping infiltration of western thought and culture into Islam. They are
horrified with the prospect of what the west sees as the inevitable cross-cultural, bi-
lateral assimilation of cultures. While the west refers to this as cross-fertilization and
modernization, they eastern fundamentalists see it as pollution of the pure and holy
ways.
Fundamentalist clerics in Iran tried to launch a jihad in the 1980s, but they failed. A
second contemporary surge came in the 1990s when Arab veterans of the Soviet-
Afghan war went home and sought to turn their nations into fundamental Islamic states.
Tens of thousands died, but only Afghanistan has achieved this end, which is why bin
Laden is there. His vision of a Islamic fundamentalist revolution sweeping over the
middle east has not come to fruition and he has to hide out in the only place he can,
Afghanistan. Coordination among militant Muslims has been difficult, though bin Laden
has achieved some inroads in the Indonesian Moluccas and in Mindanao in the
Philippines and in the Uighurs in China and in Uzbekistan, and is currently making
contacts with the Hizbullah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. The problem is that each of
these groups have their own local grievances and local agendas. The only uniting
theme seems to be Pax Americana - America the Evil Empire. As we have noted
repeatedly, they see American power everywhere; in politics, economics, culture, radio,
television, movies, and they resent it deeply. Even the moderate Islamic community is in
agreement with the Pax Americana theme, and that broad theme plays well all across
the Islamic world. This conflict serves as an increasingly visible flashpoint as the two
cultures inevitably become forced together in the globalizing economy, like two
molecules in a cycletron. We are looking at a potential volatile clash of civilizations and
a seemingly permanent struggle between the West and a group with a deep-seated
resistance to the West and that will resist Western values to the death. It is the conflict
of the mediaeval crusades being played out a nearly millennia later and on a much wider
stage.
Perhaps we need to pause and take a moment to examine the fundamental elements of
the faith of Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of the prophets,
completing the work begun by Abraham, Moses and Jesus. The word Islam means
submission to God or Allah, and Muslim means a person who submits. While there is
some use of the Judeo-Christian bible, the Muslim religious community utilizes the
Quran (reading or recitation) which is largely the revelations of Muhammad who lived
from 570 - 632 AD. Their second most holy book is the Sunna. Just as the Christian
world can be roughly divided between Catholic and Protestant, the Islamic world can be
divided between Shiite and Sunni. The great difference between the Shiites and the
Sunni Moslems originally revolved around who can interpret these works of scripture
(many cultural differences now). To the Shiite, only the imam (or clergy) can interpret.
To the Sunni, the scriptures can be interpreted by a group of religious scholars
(interesting because to some extent that is what split the Christian world with the
Catholic saying the Pope alone can interpret the scriptures while the Protestant world
was saying that Pope is not infallible and that individuals can interpret for themselves).
The Shiites believe the religious scholars to be worldly and sensual rulers (too liberal)
and adopted a more conservative approach. Subsequent to this original rift, these two
groups have grown to develop their own cultural identities, just as in the
Catholic/Protestant Christian world, and numerous off-shots have emerged ala
Protestantism - Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.
The Islamic religion is based on three foundations as outlined in the Quran and the
Sunna:
1. Iman - faith
2. Ihsan - proper conduct in ones daily life
3. Ibadat - religious duty
The five pillars of the religion are as follows:
1. Daily resuscitation of the following - there is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is
his prophet
2. Salat or prayer, five times a day facing Mecca generally using a prayer rug upon
which they prostrate themselves
3. Zakat or almsgiving - 2 ½ percent of their annual accumulation of wealth is to be
given to the poor
4. Ramadan or fasting - no food nor drink from sun up to sundown during the sacred
month of Ramadan (the Islamic month is not the same as the Western world, so
the sacred month of Ramadan falls during different months on the Julian
calendar, as of course then, does the month of the Dhu-al-Hijja).
5. Hajj or pilgrimage - once in a lifetime all are to make a pilgrimage to the Holy
Mosque in Mecca. Wear a seemless white robe (all the same rich or poor), enter
the shrine fasting, circle the Kaba seven times and then kiss or touch the black
stone. It is to be undertaken so that the worshipper arrives during the month of
Dhu-al-Hijja. It also involves walking/running seven times between two low hills
nearby which symbolizes Hagars frantic search for water for d\crying Ishmael.
There is another matter regarding the Islamic religion that warrants our review. There is
a rock in the near east where tradition says Abraham prepared to sacrifice Issac. It is
the same rock upon which Muhammed ascended into heaven on his horse. Known as
the Further Mosque, or Mosque of Omar, it marks the cite of the Temple of Solomon in
Jerusalem, an dis known by Jews and Christians as the Dome of the Rock. It is the 3rd
most sacred mosque of Islam (Mecca, then Medina, then the Dome of the Rock).
For Muslim, religion is a core identity. And it is not a religion, but a way of life
encompassing social, economic, political spheres. There is no separation of church and
state in the Islamic community. They preach of a theocracy, where the imam or the
caliph rules both the state and the church. The government exists to implement the law
of the Quran and the Sunna. Religion and political power are inextricably intertwined.
In a broader context, they divide the world into two fundamental sections - the House of
Islam and the House of War. No political entity outside of Islam can exist permanently.
Every Muslim has the religious duty of the jihad - carrying out the war of conversion. A
state of war exists between the House of Islam and the House of War. With the
conversion of all human kind, the war will end. Interestingly, this very dogmatic
perspective is tempered by an amazing tolerance toward people from ANY religion who
agree to abide by the teaching of the Quran. These are the protected people or the
dhimmis. So, if you dont cheat, steal, lie, gamble, commit adultery, kill, you will be left
alone, even if you dont pray five times a day to Allah, nor go to the mosque to worship.
The Moslem faith is very tolerant of other religions, even atheists. The one religion they
despise, however, is the Christian due in large part to the extreme intolerance of the
Christian toward the Muslim, dating back some 1,000 years when Pope Urban II first
issued the free the Holy Land from its blasphemous masters decrees (in 1095),
coupled with the hypocrisy of the Christian; the crusaders were largely criminals, as
contemporary writers noted - they were murderers, perjurers and adulterers,
sacrilegious criminals and sinners. The audacity and absurdity of the Christian, calling
the Muslims blasphemous infidels and sending in the crusaders to purify the region - if
the end results werent so horrific, it would be laughable, the quintessential paradox, and
the matter still rankles the Islamic world. Only in the past 80 years have we seen the
Islamic hatred toward the Jew emerge, and that is due to the theft of Arabic lands by the
Jews beginning in the 1920s. Prior to the 1920s, there was no such animosity. The
Christian, on the other hand, has been the enemy of the Muslim for a thousand years.
So while there is a common Judeo-Christian religious past, there is a thick
psychological, theological and cultural barrier between the Christian, and the Muslim.
This conflict has yielded horrific consequences over the years and left a legacy of deep
and bitter hostility. Each view the other as infidels. Christians feel threatened by a faith
that acknowledges God as the creator of the universe but denies the doctrine of the
Trinity, that accepts Christ as a prophet but denies his divinity, that believes in the Last
Judgement but makes sex heavens greatest reward (the Muslim view of heaven
features lush green gardens surrounded by bubbling streams; there, the saved, clothes
in silk robes, lounge on soft couches, nibble on fresh fruit, sip cool drinks and enjoy the
sexual companionship of physically attractive people). To the Muslim, Christianity was
an early, incomplete and obsolete form of the true religion. Christians were and are
culturally inferior and the ultimate in pious hypocrisy, sanctimoniously preaching love yet
moving with extreme intolerance toward any non-Christian and inspiring near constant
war - the Muslim community looked on with amazement thru the middle ages as the
Christian world of Europe moved from one war to another thus confirming in the
Muslim mind the baseless spiritual foundation of the Christian religion. During that time,
the Muslim world far surpassed the Christian world as a civilized society - Islamic
literature was fully developed, their medical advances far surpassed the west, they
advanced architecture to the point that the western world did not catch up until the era
of Michelangelo. The great library in St. Gall in Switzerland had 600 books....the library
of Cordoba had 400,000 books. Science, math, engineering, medicine, literature - there
was no match. The West was, in point of fact, populated by large numbers of ignorant
barbarians during this time. The Muslim worlds error was that when the West settled
down and began to progress (ie., the Renaissance period emerged), the Muslim
predisposition of viewing with contempt anything West kept them from recognizing the
fundamental shifts. They continued to limit their interactions, stayed isolated, and
eventually fell behind.
The result is the backward Islamic societies we see today where endemic poverty
reigns, infrastructures and civic and corporate institutions are ineffectual, and there is
virtually no scholarly or artistic contributions forthcoming. The Islamic political
leadership has truly let its people down, and the people, who also bare some of the
responsibility, have stood by and allowed the leadership to default.
I believe that much of the Islamic anger can find its roots in jealously, and an almost
anomic-type frustration over the fact that it appears that Allah has let them down; that
their god is wrong and that the Christian and their god is winning. We must remember
that there is a definitive marriage between politics, economics and religion in the Muslim
mind and culture. Religion dominates culture in the Islamic world, and to eke out a
subsistence living with an awareness of bounties of the western world is galling and
strikes at the very heart of their being. It is a pride issue, combined with a dogmatic
religious fervor, and our prosperity is indirectly but openly confronting them. The Muslim
is totally convinced of the superiority of their religion and inherent culture, and are now
obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
The Islamic community still remembers their time of dominance. A little history lesson.
The classical age of Islamic architecture, law and art came during the reign of Suliman
the Magnificent (named after Solomon). He lived from 1494 until 1561. He expanded
the Ottoman empire until it butted heads with the Safavids (modern day Iranians who
were Shiites; he was a Sunni) in the east, and Europe in the west. He conquered
Hungary and laid siege to Vienna. Bad weather slowed him down and he could not get
his big guns to the Vienna siege site. He left as winter began to set in, fully intending to
come back, but domestic problems prevented him from ever returning. More important
than his military conquests were his contributions to the quality of life. He had been
taught to read as a youngster and once in power, sought to implement many of the
wonderful ideas he had read and had been taught about. He pressed for all manner of
social and economic reforms, modifying the institution of slavery, organizing schools for
the young and universities for the older, developed libraries, encouraged and supported
scientific inquiry, promoted advanced in architecture, encouraged intellectual exchange.
It was a glorious era.
He had four wives and multiple concubines. His firstborn son (Mustofa) was clearly
being groomed to take over, but Suliman had fallen for a slave girl. He eventually made
her an official wife. Seeking to place her son on the throne, she managed to move into
the palace and then orchestrated a coup, setting Mustofa up as the culprit. Suliman had
him killed. She also killed Sulimans closest advisor and best friend who was clearly
going to challenge her sons legitimacy to the throne . Despite these activities, Suliman
loved her and basically lost interest in life once she died. He left the kingdom on her
death and spent the rest of life on the battlefield, dying at age 67. His generals fought
for control of the empire after his death, and the Ottoman empire and the Islamic world
in general has frankly been in a long free-fall ever since. His was the height of Islamic
power, wealth and cultural glory. Since then, the Islamic world has wound down from a
great civilization into a humiliating dependence on the west, on christiandom. Along the
way, the Islamic faith has suffered as well, being diluted and altered as the people came
in contact with different cultures. There have been periodic efforts to purify Islam, to
engage in a jihad, which is an internal purifying effort. Only in the latter part of the 20th
century did the jihad take on an external slant.
Before examining the 20th century revival and to really better understand it, we need to
look at the 18th century revival. In the early 1700s, a Moslem cleric, Mohammad
Wahhab, examined the deteriorated state of the Islamic faith and called for a return to
basic fundamental worship of Islamic principles. He hooked up with powerful tribe in the
area, known today as the House of Saud, and by combining their respective political and
religious strengths, they were able to carve out a nation. This interesting alliance
between politics and wealth on the one hand, and religious fundamentalism on the other
is the basis of life in modern Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government maintains its
legitimacy to rule from the people due to the fact that it preserves Islam. It recently
spent some $17 billion for example, to rebuild shrines in Mecca and Medina (contracts
given to the bin Laden group interestingly enough).
Saudi Arabia is somewhat unique in that the people are extremely conservative, but the
ruling figures are clearly liberal, almost avant-garde. This conflict is a source of huge
problems for the House of Saud. Though liberal, the ruling Saudi hierarchy have to
appease the strong ultra-conservative/fundamentalism voices of the people and the
voices of their religious partners, the Wahhabists. It is extremely important to note that
there is not the relatively clean separation of church and state in Saudi Arabia as there
is in the U.S. and the Western world in general. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, for
example, when it was quite apparent that American forces (read infidel forces) were
going to stay in Saudi Arabia/on sacred soil, the Wahhabists in the Saudi political fabric
were granted more power as an act of appeasement.
The Saudi government has purposely engaged in a policy for years that has allowed
them to successfully walk this tight rope - they export their problems and have been
doing so even more aggressively since the end of the Gulf Ward (just as the Pope did in
the Crusade era; had a significant number of rowdy men in Europe causing problems so
why dont you boys go save Jerusalem never ever thinking they would be successful).
They urge the most radical fundamental voices to leave Saudi Arabia and preach
elsewhere, and the Saudi government even finances these activities (with all of their
American dollars obtained from oil sales). The result is that Saudi Arabia (in an attempt
to rid itself of its internal problems and because of its Western world/American financed
wealth) has been fostering fundamentalistic Islamism (Wahhabism) throughout the
eastern world. The problem is that Wahhabism is becoming more and more closed,
dogmatic and strident, bouyed by the Islamic victory over the Communists. That alone
does not bode well, but the problem is all the more aggravated due to the fact that the
global economy and its ethic of openness and freedom is now beginning to reach into
the Islamic world and is directly butting heads with Wahhabisms confining principles.
We have a battle on our hands, a conflict of philosophy, a war really, between religious,
economic, political and social freedom and the economic prosperity that philosophy has
created, versus medieval despotism, repression and the resulting underdevelopment
and poverty that flows from that model.
Let me pause and note that the mechanism for the exportation of Wahhabism in the
eastern world are the so-called Madrass schools. The Saudi government (among other
entities) finance the private Madrass schools. There are some 40,000 in Pakistan
alone. Madrass schools are fundamental religious-based schools, where children learn
to read and write by focusing exclusively on the Koran. They will spend up to 6 hours a
day memorizing passages from the Koran and subsequently spending 2 - 4 hours
listening to fundamentalist religious diatribes. They also, of late, are learning of their
sacred duty to take up arms in jihads against all non-Moslems, and to generally not
tolerate any non-Moslem. The curriculum in many of the schools involve some
components of military military training. At least 6,000 Madrass schools in Pakistan
could be classified as militant. Parents with moderate Islamic philosophies will send
their children to these schools because there are no other options - public schools are
non-existent or of low quality. The Madrass schools are well-financed and often offer
graduates scholarships to go study elsewhere. Madrass school officials who move into
an area, literally take over the town due to their wealth, and their ability to offer hope to
parents. They literally overwhelm local political and business leaders who are not a
major part of the Islamic landscape at present - businesses are small/almost
subsistence and Moslem political leaders are not powerful in the Islamic church/state
settings.
But the bottom line is that Saudi wealth is exporting fundamentalism Islam. The
Madrass model has protected Saudi Arabia by exporting its most vocal problems and
getting them out of sight. It also protected Saudi Arabia, and Islam in general from
being invaded by Communist ideology. The Madrass schools so indoctrinated the
people into the Islamic ways that the communist social and economic model didnt have
a chance of being adopted in the Muslim world, unlike Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba,
and several central American states who were sold on the socio-economic message of
Communism and moved in that direction. The Madrass school system also, in the end,
protected the Islamic world from being physically overtaken by the communists, for when
the communists invaded, fighters from all over the Islamic world, motivated by the need
to protect the Islamic world from infidel invaders, rallied and won.
That victory changed the Muslim world, giving them their first victory against an outside
power in years. Remember that they allied with the Germans in World War I and World
War II, losing in both contexts, and have had a long litany of losses verses Israel. To
take on a foreign power, a so-called Superpower no less, and win was a huge
confidence booster. It buoyed them, emboldened them and pushed contemporary
Madrass teachings into a more aggressive format, which again was fueled in large part
to the Islamic victory over the Russians in the Afghan Wars. The result is the presence
of a large number of very dogmatic, fundamentalist Moslems who are ready to both
protect their turf and to export their message using any means possible. Many Taliban
leaders and fighters, for example, were trained in Saudi financed Madrass schools in
Pakistan.
The Saudis are not fools. They fully recognize that the Madrass schools are out of
control and in a contemporary context, have lost their usefulness. The Saudi
government itself could fall if the fundamentalists continue to gain in strength and
influence. The Saudis fully realize the need to, if not eliminate the Madrass schools, at
least make some serious alterations in the current model. We can expect changes on
that front, and that will bode well in the long-term. The problem is that there are literally
thousands of young fundamentalist Moslems out there right, determined to protect core
Islam, determined to export their fundamentalist message, and determined to stop the
Western worlds galloping global economy with all its collateral openness and freedoms
and decadence, and value challenging messages. This war is going to take generations
to be resolved, and will be declared over by historians, not politicians.
Returning again to our theme of the contemporary Islamic revival, we see three crucial
events:
A. In the 1950s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser openly promoted a pan-
Islamic agenda, and although he lost the Suez War of 1956 on the battlefield, the
end result of the post-war political contest was the retreat of the French and
British troops from the Suez...the first real victory of the east over the west in the
20th century.
B. In 1979, the western-backed Shah of Iran is deposed and the fundamentalist
Ayatollah Khomeini becomes the ruler of Iran. Another victory of the east over
the west.
C. In 1989, the Soviets are defeated in Afghanistan after a disastrous ten year war
(invaded 12/25/79). This, perhaps more than anything else, fueled the fires of the
Islamic resurgence. The eastern world took out a superpower, and they would
take out the other one soon. We are still involved in that battle.
Mitigating the Islamic resurgence is a very definitive sense of defeatism that is rather
pervasive in the Arabic culture. Rage turns quickly to disappointment in the Arab world,
and bin Ladens jihad against the west has already begun to chill. There have been
many who have raised the Muslims hopes, only to see them come crashing down. Our
people are too jaded, writes an Arabic researcher, we are willing to celebrate bin Laden
for a while, and then when he is defeated we say, enough, there goes another one.
At this point, Bin Ladens network is broken, and fundamentalist Islam is in retreat. A
decade ago, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan all were poised to move toward an
Islamic state, but no longer. In Turkey in fact, the former fundamentalists are now liberal
who want to move Turkey into the European Union. The groups are laying lowing
because fewer and fewer are buying their message. People, rank and file people have
stopped looking at Islam as their salvation. The Taliban in the end held no allure, and
the people are beginning to realize that fundamentalism has no real answers to the
problems of the modern world - it has only fantasies.
But there remains a problem. As they lose their mass appeal, revolutionary movements
often turn more violent. Having failed to win the hearts of the people, they often seek to
intimidate them through fear. Bin Laden has certainly contributed to this potential
outcome, for he has purposefully built an ethos of enmity, a modern nihilistic
perspective - suicidal, mutual annihilation, mutual apocalyptic obliteration and
extermination (ala the Sicari, People Temple, Masada). We dont face a region with
alternatives to Western ideas, but a region with problems. Those bin Laden trained are
adaptin, looking for new ways to sow chaos and war.
Interestingly, there was an era when many Christians felt they had a sacred obligation to
convert the world to God, even by force if necessary. That era has largely past in the
western psychic, but not so in the east. Even the mainstream Muslim feels an internal
obligation to fight Christians and convert them. One big difference is that while the
Christian community never did expressly state that all have this obligation, the Islamic
faith does - all Muslims have the religious duty of the jihad - to carry out the war of
conversion, and to many it is a war, not a conversion. And while the crusades ran from
roughly the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, the Muslim community still remembers
them well, and many are ready to start up the war all over again and rid the world of the
sanctimonious infidel Christian hypocrite.
14. The Hypocrisy Of It All
It is interesting to me to see the hypocrisy in this. Many of the Muslims I spoke with in
Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines last year vigorously denounced America by day
and yet consumed our bounty by night. It is a very mixed relationship. In the Philippines
in general there is an anti-American sub-current that says, Yankee go home...but take
me with you. Many of our vocal enemies watch our movies, listen to our music, copy
our dress styles, send their kids to our universities, vacation here. They are seduced by
America. An investigative reporter from USA Today found that many of the 19 who
hijacked the planes on September 11 spent the prior weekend drinking alcohol and
watching strip shows, tasting the lusty lifestyle they allegedly abhorred. And lest you
think I am focusing on those of the Islamic faith, Christians are no different, of course.
There are countless public examples of evangelical preachers delivering a fiery sermons
in the morning and retiring to the local motel with the secretary in the afternoon.
Hypocrisy is certainly not limited to one religion or people.
But even in the broader sense, we see a paradox, an hypocrisy in this Islamic anti-
western sentiment. In the last twenty years, American blood and dollar bills have saved
Muslim lives in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait; we supported the Muslim cause of
liberation from the Soviets in Afghanistan. Indeed, without the U.S., the Muslims of
Eastern Europe would have been exterminated, those of Central Asia would be under
communist rule, and those of the Gulf and Arabian peninsula would be the subjects of
Saddam Hussein.
15. Impacts To Date And Opportunities For The Future
The events of September 11 have had a marked impact on America:
A. Accelerated the recession
B. Resulted in a glut of/cheaper oil
C. Created a terrorism tax in the form of increased expenditures for security
D. Caused an upsurge in defense spending
E. Caused a reexamination of American monetary and fiscal policy
F. Caused a shift to the right in terms of due process constitutional protections
(massive Arab internment; open discussion of using military tribunals to deal with
defendants; we cannot make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free; we
need to avoid the evil excesses of pointless rage that consumes our adversaries)
G. Caused Japan to dust off its long dormant military hardware
H. Moved Americans to reexamine life and relationships
I. American movement slide toward isolation and unilateralism was somewhat
reversed
J. Enhanced the bi-lateral relations between the U.S. and Pakistan
K. Enhanced the bi-lateral relations between the U.S. and Russia
L. Matured George Bush
M. Presented the world with a picture of what things would be like in a melt down
and prompted, ironically, more countries to speed their entry into the global
economy - to join the EU and the WTO and other global economic institutions;
ironic because globalization, post-modernism and creeping western/American
culture were the primary reasons the Trade Towers were bombed.
N. Contributed to the collapse of Enron and WorldCom (the largest bankruptcies in
American history). Interestingly, Enron, WorldCom and Kenneth Lay have clearly
had a greater impact on the American economy than did bin Laden and Al Qaida.
This now emerges as an interesting era of opportunity; as the saying goes, the great
ones adjust:
A. Opportunity to warm relations between India and Pakistan
B. Opportunity to end violence in Palestine
C. Opportunity to shake terrorism loose from Iraq, Iran, Libya, the Sudan, Syria
D. Opportunity to go after Sadam
Closing Comments
We must realize that we are not engaged in a battle with an individual, but are rather
embedded in a serious conflict of cultures. For a variety of reasons that have been
spelled out in this presentation, there is a significant measure of animosity toward
America on the part of many in the Muslim faith; a feeling reflected not just by the
Islamic fringe, but also by a large proportion of those who are in the Islamic
mainstream. This is not a battle with Osama bin Laden per se, but a conflict with the
core of fundamentalist Islamic culture.
We certainly need to marshal our forces to take on the enemy, but I must emphasize
that the enemy is not just bin Laden. The real enemy is a fluid, illusive yet very real anti-
Western/anti-American sentiment that has been built up to effervescent proportions in
the Arabian states. How we attack that enemy will require a significant measure of
thought and deliberation, and years of concerted effort. We must move with some
caution in this present campaign, and maintain a focused awareness of the larger
context, lest we end up literally taking on the entire Islamic world - truly an apocalyptic
scenario.
One of the great concerns is what to do with bin Laden when and if we find him. Many
have suggest that he be killed. I believe that killing Osama bin Laden will make him a
martyr to the cause, and like the multi-headed Hydra of Greek mythology, will
ultimately result in many more persons anxiously seeking to take his place and do his
bidding. In the same vein, killing and/or executing has little purpose in this context.
What is the purpose of executing people who are willing to die? If anything, such
executions risk having the opposite effect; creating martyrs out of criminals.
Again, I greatly fear that if we initiate a policy of harsh military retaliation, it will result in a
decades-long cycle of mutually assured retaliation. We need only look to Northern
Ireland and Palestine/Israel as settings where such a retaliation model has failed.
Interestingly, both of these case studies include the religious dimension which is so
prominent in the current context.
It must be stressed that the real struggle is not military in nature, but the one for the
minds, wills and perspectives of the hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims
worldwide, especially the teenage boys. Most Muslims are still struggling to combine
their faith with modernity and have not given in to fantasies about a medieval utopia
based on pure Islam. We need to help this along. We must also recognize that a
more potent brand of Islam is emerging, almost an armed doctrine in some quarters
(though it takes different forms in different countries), and point out to our Arabic
neighbors that it threatens the stability of their states as well as ours. Religious scholars
need to get out the message loud and clear that bin Ladens version of Islam is a
grotesque distortion. All religion has two sides - one side that unites and unifies and
transcends national and ethnic boundaries; one side that is all about boundaries (to be a
Catholic is to NOT be a Protestant, to be a Muslim is to NOT be a Jew, etc.). Religion
provides both a sense of identity and belonging as well as a focus for hatred and for not
belonging. Extremists focus on the divisive aspects and ignore the positive, universal
aspects.
We need to press Arab regimes to confront this emerging Islamic extremism, to get the
Saudis in particular to stop encouraging their media to rant about America, and to open
their societies to ease their peoples sense of powerlessness and discontent. We need
to stress that there is not a tidal wave of fundamentalism in the Arab world, and that the
Arabic leaders no longer need to pander to the few vocal extremists as they do now.
Nor is there a need to kill them and maintain the police states so common in the Arabic
world. The extremists can be battled politically. The message to the Arab leadership is
deliver economic and political progress, and the fundamentalist threat will wither away.
Killing bin Laden and dismantling Al Qaeda is not the sole answer. The conditions that
produced bin Laden - poverty, decades of humiliation, repressive and corrupt local
regimes, backward-looking religious extremists remain and fester. Those problems
must be addressed (we must drain the swamps), and they must be addressed by the
Islamic leadership. These conditions have yielded a large pool of relatively poor and
deprived young men who are susceptible to the argument that they can best spend their
lives by serving Allah and donating their lives to the cause. Fundamentalist Islam
gives hope to the hopeless. Until someone can offer these people something better
than a martyrs death, then the bin Ladens of this world will always fine a home.
The roots of Islamic terror reside in the dysfunctional politics of the region, where failure
and repression have produced fundamentalism and violence. For reform to spread, the
Arab world needs a success story. It needs one major country that embraces
modernity, maintains its identity and inspires the region, must as Japan did for East
Asia. The best deterrence to terrorism is good governance, and an embedded culture of
success (Turkey is a good candidate by the way). As David Landis noted in his work,
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, that the most significant distinguishing factor
between the struggling/developing/transitional nations from the progressive industralized
ones is the culture of success. We need to work with the Islamic nations and help their
institutions begin to embed a culture of success into their social fabric.
We do not seek democracy in the Middle East, at least not yet. We seek first what
might be called the preconditions for democracy, or what I would call constitutional
liberalism - the rule of law, individual rights, free press, private property, independent
courts, the separation of church and state. In the Western world, these two ideas have
fused together, hence the phrase liberal democracy, but they are analytically and
historically distinct. We should not assume that what took hundreds of years in the
West can happen overnight in the East.
I think that the regimes in the Middle East will be delighted to learn that we will not try to
force them to hold elections tomorrow. They will be less pleased to know that we will
press them on a whole array of other issues - free press, rule of law, etc.
The Saudis must stop exporting their Madrass school model. Egypt must insist that the
state-owned press drop its anti-American rants and open itself up to their internal
voices. In Qatar, we should urge the emir who started the Arabic Al-Jazeera television
network, to make it a more moderate and responsible entity. None of these reforms will
produce democracy per se, but they will slow down the spread of illiberal voices and
viewpoints and help create an environment where democracy can take hold.
The more lasting path to reform will be economic. We have Spain, Portugal, Chile,
Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico as examples. These regimes first liberalized the
economy, not out of any desire to expand freedom, but rather because they wanted to
get rich. But this expansion of economic liberty had steady spillover effects. Economic
reform meant the beginnings of a genuine rule of law - capitalism needs contracts,
openness to the world, access to information, and perhaps most importanly, the
development of a business class. An independent class of business people is the key to
liberal democracy. Business has a stake in openness, in rules, in stability. Instead of
the romance of ideology, they seek the reality of materialism. A genuine entrepreneurial
business class would be the single most important force for change in the Middle East,
pulling along all others in its wake.
If we could choose one place to press hardest to reform, it should be Egypt. Egypt is
the intellectual soul of the Arab world. If it were to progress economically and politically,
it would demonstrate more powerfully than any essay or speech that Islam is compatible
with modernity, and that Arabs can thrive in todays world. In East Asia, Japans
economic success proved to be a powerful example that others in the region looked to
and followed. The Middle East needs one such homegrown success story. But when
we sit down and talk with these regimes, we often return to FOTA (fear of the
alternatives). The regimes often remind us that for all of their foibles and follies, they
are better than a fundamentalist alternative (see Iran and Afghanistans experience with
this). But we should not believe them. The rulers of the Middle East are not democratic
politicians with a sense of what their public wants. They are dictators badly out of touch
with public sentiment. These rulers fear a public that they barely know.
The greatest potency Islamic fundamentalism holds is that it is an alternative (a mystical,
utopian alternative) to the wretched reality that most people live under in the Middle
East. But whenever Muslim fundamentalists are forced to leave their philosophic
rhetoric and become involved in the grind of actual governance, in day to day politics,
their luster has worn off. People have realized that the streets still have to be cleaned,
government finances have to be managed and education attended to. The mullahs can
preach and even inflame and excite, but they cannot rule. Having lived under Islamic
fundamentalist rule, Iranians are now inoculated against its appeal.
If the Arabic regimes were to open up some political space, take a chance, and let the
fundamentalists grapple with the practical realities rather than spin dreams, they will find
it cannot but dull the extremists allure among the masses. The problem again, is that
the Arabic dictators fear their pubic, a public that they really do not know. They need to
take a less from Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Chile.....These countrys rulers
liberalized, accommodated the dissenters and even brought them into the system
somewhat with the end result of taming them. The result was civic and corporate
stability, peoples lives improved, political reform followed economic reform and anti-US
sentiment quieted down to the usual protests against Americanization of their
cultures...that kind of anti-Americanism will be a sign of a healthy political culture.
I suspect this notion of openness, of allowing some measure of dissent to tame the
dissidents, will be a hard sell on our part, because these regimes, again fearing a public
they do not know, are reluctant to take any chances. It is a calculated risk based to a
large part on faith - that accommodation will result in mitigation. They all remember the
fate of the Shah. But it should be pointed out that this was almost 25 years ago and that
the real lesson of the Iranian revolution is that it did not spread anywhere, it brought
misery to the people, and the country, with its current progressive President Mohammed
Khatami, are continuing to turn toward the west. Indeed, the best hope for the Muslim
world may be Khatami, who still has a remnant of the Khomeini regime left in power with
which to deal (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - controls the courts, the security forces and the
paramilitary militias or Basijs, and the 12-member Council of Guardians which can veto
any law passed by the Iranian Parliament).
Specifically, Osama bin Laden does seem to appeal to millions of frustrated people in
the Islamic world. But much of his appeal is little more than an alternative to the
wretched regimes of the Islamic world and as a symbol of defiance against the mighty
American superpower/hyperpower. Once you take success away from bin Laden, what
is left is a spoiled Saudi millionaire with a medieval world view. But beyond bin Laden,
we know that he was merely tapping into a pervasive Islamic sentiment, and we are
indeed in for a protracted conflict, one that the historians, not the politicans will tell us
when it is over.
It took centuries of upheaval and internal conflict for the west to make the transition to
modernity, but the process has gone faster for everybody else since the trail was blazed.
Seventy years ago it was the Japanese, whose project for high-speed modernization
stalled with the onset of the depression. What followed was very similar to the current
Islamic reaction - authoritarian rule, an obsession with cultural purity, a hatred of the
west (General Tojo often spoke of overcoming Western civilization). It took a war, but
all of this went away, and Japan is now indisputably both modern and successful, and
perhaps even more importantly it has remained utterly Japanese. God forbid that it
should take a cataclysm like World War II to break the Middle Eastern societies out of
their current politics of hatred and despair. The Asian Muslim societies are making the
move to modernization more or less successfully and it has not taken a world war to
move them. Hopefully the same will be able to be said of their Middle Eastern
colleagues in time.
All in all, it is a most troubling enigma, enveloped with uncertainty and anxiety. The text
for the 21st century has now been laid out before us. The problem is that only the title
has been written - terrorism. We must now collectively fill the pages with the accounts
of our actions. My reading of the Islamic faith is that bin Laden's version is a rather
gross distortion of that religion, and that message needs to be broadcast throughout the
world. My reading of American policy is that we too often engage in activities that result
in a gross distortion of justice and it needs to be changed. I fear that many will lose their
lives until these two messages can be received, understood, and transformed into
reality.
The events of September 11 are destined to have a marked and personal impact on
your lives and the lives of your children for years to come. We have had a hiatus from
serious history for many years, but that all changed. Generations of Americans have
been shaped by such seminal events - the stock market crash of September 1929, the
Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Kennedy assassination in
November of 1963, and now the suicide bombings of September 2001. These epoch-
making events initially yielded a significant measure of uncertainly and fear. The
generations of my parents and grandparents, with their collective positive responses and
willingness to sacrifice, rose to the challenge and transformed American into what it is
today. We, of course, dont know what the end result of this new challenge will be. That
is the essence of the game of life - what stock should I buy, what should I study in
school, who should I marry, what job should I take, etc. How wonderful it would be to
know the end and how to get there before the game began. Mortality simply does not
work that way of course, and we must go about setting our goals and pressing on with
an immovable resolve; uncertainty and anxiety be damned. Just how the events of
September 11 will personally impact you and me has yet to be played out. War is
emanate, and though the bulk of the battles will likely be waged in far off shores, the
new model of war places all citizens, including you and me, literally on the front lines.
We will all long for the days prior to this incommunicable horror, and for the relative
peace and stability that were so much a part of our lives. If the collective rage of the
American people can be galvanized into action (a most likely reality at this point; we are
slow to anger as a nation, but mighty when angered), and if the American leadership can
properly utilize and direct this mighty, raging bull, we will ultimately triumph and return to
that more quiescent era when the newscasts were filled with the trite and the trivial. I
believe it is going to take some years and some significant loss of life before that is
achieved. I hope that I can personally have an impact in this venture. The commitment,
sacrifice and accomplishment of my ancestors gave me 50 years of peace and
prosperity. I have enjoyed my relatively placid existence because those who have gone
before sacrificed so much. They presented me with an environment that, in retrospect, I
surely took too much for granted. But, the meter is now up, life has changed, and it is
my turn to grab the oars, it is my turn to respond to this latest challenge and to assume
the responsibility for moving our nation, our civilization to a higher plane.
Exactly what I do with those oars, and just how I and millions of other Americans
respond remains to be seen, but sideline sitting is no longer acceptable. Interestingly,
that thought yields a significant measure of personal repose, for after all, the greatest
gift of life is to have work worth doing. I pray that I live long enough to see the return of
tranquility to my land, and to see my children and my childrens children enjoy a world of
peace and prosperity, where all have the capability and the opportunity to chart and
achieve their own manifest destiny.
To that extent, we, the survivors, owe it to those who paid ultimate price, owe it to our
children and to ourselves, to defiantly demonstrate to future would-be terrorists, that we
are NOT terrorized, that we NOT demoralized by their actions, and that we will band
together with our government and business and civic leaders to overcome all obstacles
to create a greater sense of peace, stability and safety in our world. That is your duty
and mine. Our decade long hiatus from history is over and American life now no longer
can tolerate sideline sitters but demands men and women of action in all spheres. The
liberty of the state is preserved only by the watchfulness of the citizen. Only eternal
vigilance on our part, on your part can diminish the impact of the future tragedies that
await us. Yes, I believe that tragedies do await us - tragedy is an inherent dimension of
the human condition, in our domestic settings, in our local communities, on the worlds
stage.
A final thought, in the aggregate context I believe that the rationale practice of
international politics has always functioned at the mercy of the irrational who possess a
passionate sense of the rightness of their cause and the infamy of their enemies. It is
our responsibility to mitigate that omnipresent reality to the best of our abilities in
whatever sphere or setting we may find ourselves.