Does Terrorism Advance the Islamist Cause?
Daniel Pipes Weblog
May 23, 2005
Here Pipes disagrees with another of my faves, Mark Steyn, over whether Bali, Madrid, Beslan, 9/11 etc further the Islamist cause or not. Steyn says they do, Pipes says they don't.
12 comments:
V. interesting. I'm not sure who I agree with. They're both quite gloomy.
I was struck by this sentence:
" A week and a half after the VE Day anniversary, here’s a date that will get a lot less attention: May 19, 2005. On that day, the War on Terror will have outlasted America’s participation in the Second World War. In other words, the period since 9/11 will be longer than the period of time between Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the Japanese surrender in August 1945."
I'm sure Steyn is aware of this, but it reminded me that one of the reasons that particular comparisons falls down is because WWII was against specific countries/regimes, while the war on terror has been against an abstract noun. How do you win this war? Do you extend it to actual countries and regimes (a la Iraq and the axis of evil) or is it like the war on drugs - a never-ending police operation? (genuine question btw, not rhetorical grandstanding.)
P.S. I should have made clear that the quote was from the Steyn article.
the war on terror has been against an abstract noun
My instant reaction was to write that both Pipes and Steyn are very much anti the description of this as a war on "terror", when it is actually a war against militant Islam.
I did indeed dig up this from Pipes:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/943
[The Need to Name and] Know Thy Terrorists
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
November 19, 2002
..but it looks like Steyn has a more nuanced position on what we're fighting:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1075782427963
International terrorism takes a hit
Mark Steyn
Jerusalem Post
3/2/04
How do you win this war?
If you see it as a war against a totalitarian ideology, then history offers some tips.
Of what I have read, Paul Berman ("Terror and Liberalism") and Pipes ("Militant Islam Reaches America") argue most coherently for viewing Islamism in this way, and offer methods for dealing with it, hence my Berman posting here:
http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/06/bush-is-idiot-but-he-was-right-about.html
Peter Hitchens reflection on 9/11 and the truth he believes we are still afraid to face:
"Most people still won’t face what really happened ten years ago today. We still get the standard-issue rubbish about how New York was attacked because ‘Islamists hate our way of life’. And we still get the thought-free incantation that ‘9/11 changed everything’, a vacant slogan used to justify unending, dangerous attacks on our freedom.
This general unwillingness to think got us into the futile war in Afghanistan, and the appallingly costly and bloody and pointless war in Iraq. The pathetic Blair creature, who has learned nothing from his life, wants us to be even stupider, and launch a war in Iran as well.
Perhaps we won’t accept the truth because it is so awkward. It is certainly awkward for me, as I’ll explain.[...]They were striking at America’s alliance with Israel. The hijacked planes, as I wrote on this page ten years ago, were Yasser Arafat’s cruise missiles.
That is why news of the New York murders led to grisly demonstrations of joy and triumph across the Middle East, film of which was quickly suppressed by the Palestinian movement for fear of a wave of American rage directed against them. And it worked. American wrath and thunderbolts fell on Afghanistan and Iraq, not on Gaza or Ramallah, let alone on Saudi Arabia, where most of the murderers came from.
Within weeks, George W. Bush had reversed a long-standing policy and come out in favour of a Palestinian state.
This interpretation doesn’t suit me personally at all. It scares me stiff. I stick to it because I cannot avoid the fact that it is true. I believe it is the duty of the civilised West, having created the state of Israel, to defend its integrity and independence against irrational hatred and murderous threats. I believe this in spite of the fact that Israel has done, and continues to do, many wicked things.''
Hitchens piece cont.
"I believe also that the West is deeply unwilling to face facts about this. It repeatedly pursues a policy of forcing Israel to give up territory in return for unenforceable promises of peace. This sort of negotiation was last used by Neville Chamberlain towards Hitler over Czechoslovakia. It failed, and is universally reviled as ‘Appeasement’. Yet now it is called ‘Land for Peace’, and applauded.
The Muslim world has never properly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state. We have never asked it to because we thought we could buy peace with concessions. Israel is already so small it will eventually disappear completely if we carry on buying peace with slices of land.
As long as the Arab and Muslim world refuse to accept Israel’s existence, we are ensuring horrible misery in the future – either in the Middle East, or here, or in the USA – or all three. In the coming decade we are going to have to choose between pressing, with all the courtesy and force at our command, for a genuine, permanent recognition of Israel, or accepting a weak process of appeasement interrupted by who knows what horrors.
Even though we all know how appeasement ends, I think it is what we have chosen. That is why we hide the truth from ourselves today and every day."
This was Osama Bin Laden's statement on 9/11: 'In the video, bin Laden accused Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because Al Qaeda "hates freedom." The terrorist leader said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims. "We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden said.
He said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.
"While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women," he said. "God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said.'
Yes of course it was part of the inspiration, and it's a factor in their motivation, but there's a lot more to Muslim grievances than that, as Bernard Lewis puts well.
I suspect some supporters of Israel find this uncomfortable, because they fear that if it is specifically about American support for Israel, when things get tough the US will abandon them. Perhaps they feel the West's support can be secured if this is presented as a war against the West and our way of life...
Mebbe.
I think the Left in America (as everywhere) would happily abandon Israel now.
I think the US will actually do so the moment it's no longer in their strategic interest.
This echoes the discussion we were having JP - Hitchens on 9/11 and Israel again:
"The official explanation, adopted by the entire neo-conservative and liberal interventionist choir, has always been that the attack was motivated by 'Hatred for Our Way of Life'. 'Islamism' etc, and that it was the work of a specific organisation called 'Al Qaeda' with these priorities. One effect of this has been the swelling of 'Al Qaeda' from a nebulous concept into a vast bogey overshadowing the entire world, whose hand was seen behind every terrrorist act . This is obviously misleading, but is still clung to by many people who ought to know better. Why? Because the alternative (and correct) explanation has such worrying diploimatic and political consequences for so many people and countries.
This explanation suited the neo-cons and liberal interventionists who wished to make anti-Islamic points by attacking the Taleban in Afghanistan (almost wholly irrelevant to the issue) and who wished to spread 'democracy' to the Middle East by attacking Iraq.
It suited Saudi Arabia, from whose shores most of the murderers had come (and whose other connections with the 11th September are, I believe, explored in the 28 censored pages from the Congressional report on 9/11) .
And it suited the Palestinian movement, which initially badly underestimated the wounded fury of the people (as opposed to the government) of the USA. Had the American people identified the Manhattan massacre with the 'Palestinian' cause, there would never again have been any chance of a US intervention on behalf of their cause in world diplomacy. This is another reason why the US government might not have wanted to stress the 'Palestinian' aspect of the matter. It wanted to be free to negotiate more 'Land for Peace' deals with the PA.
It also appeared to suit supporters of the US-Israel alliance, who thought that the USA would abandon its support for them if it became clear that this was the price America would now pay for that support. My own view is that this was a short-sighted mistake. That is why I say what I say."<.i>
Clearest view of what al-Qaeda really is comes from Stratfor, or Jason Burke.
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