Dinesh D’Souza thinks it was the result of the Clinton Administration’s cowardice and passivity.
More than five years after 9/11, the crucial question of why the Islamic radicals decided to strike America remains unanswered. Recall that for at least two decades prior to 9/11, radical Muslims were focused on fighting in their own countries. They were trying to overthrow their local governments and to establish Islamic states under sharia law. America was not their target.
Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, two of the leading Muslim radicals, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden, decided on a new strategy. They abandoned the tactic of fighting the “near enemy” and decided to take the battle to the “far enemy,” specifically the United States. If Zawahiri and Bin Laden had not changed course, 9/11 would not have happened.
Why, then, did they do so? In his book the Far Enemy, political scientist Fawaz Gerges argues that the radical Muslims’ strategy of fighting the near enemy proved unsuccessful, and so they decided to try something else. “When jihadis met their Waterloo on home-front battles,” Gerges writes, they “turned their guns against the West in an effort to stop the revolutionary ship from sinking.” This may be correct as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Gerges fails to explain why Muslim radicals like Zawahiri and Bin Laden, who apparently could not defeat their local governments, came to the conclusion that they could defeat the vastly more formidable United States.
Bin Laden himself supplies the answer to this question. He says he developed the suspicion that despite its outward show of power and affluence, the far enemy was weaker and more vulnerable than the near enemy…
During the mid to late 1990s, the radical Muslims tested America’s resolve by launching a series of attacks on American targets. These were massive attacks, unprecedented in the damage they inflicted. There was the Khobar Towers attack on American facilities in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa, the suicide assault on the American warship the U.S.S. Cole.
Yet in every case the Clinton administration reacted either by doing nothing, or with desultory counterattacks like a missile strike against largely unoccupied Afghan tents and the bombing of what was reported to be a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan. Clearly these responses inflicted little harm to Al Qaeda and actually made America look ridiculous in the eyes of the Muslim world. Consequently, Bin Laden became convinced that his theory of American irresolution and weakness was substantially correct. By his own account he became emboldened to conceive of a grander and more devastating strike on American shores, the strike that occurred on 9/11.
Even so, this strike could have been prevented had the Clinton administration acted on intelligence leads and struck back at Bin Laden, when it had the chance. Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer estimates that during the second term of the Clinton administration America had approximately 10 opportunities to kill Bin Laden, and took none of them…
The conclusion seems unavoidable. The Islamic radicals made the decision to attack America on 9/11 because they decided that America was cowardly and weak. They came to this conclusion largely as a result of the actions—and inaction—of the Clinton administration and its allies on the left. What could have been done to get rid of Bin Laden and avert 9/11 was not done. In this sense liberal foreign policy gave radical Muslims the confidence and the opportunity to strike, and they did.
Quick! Better elect Hillary Clinton, who’s a lot more leftwing than Bill.
Here is the new Republican Committee Ad. A lot of people on the right are complaining that it’s unoriginal, just a take-off on Bill Moyer’s anti-Goldwater “Daisy” ad. Perhaps so, but as I recall Johnson did win.
The embedded player is a bit too small for easy reading. If you have a problem, just catch it at the original GOP web-site here.
The big news story for tomorrow is the London Times has obtained a video made in January of 2000 by 9/11 hijacker pilots Mohammed Atta (American Airlines Flight 11) and Ziad Jarrah (United Airlines Flight 93) at Osama bin Laden’s Afghan base, laughing before the camera and reading their martyrdom wills.
The video was provided, unedited, but without sound, to the London Times through a previously tested channel, and even confirmed as authentic by Al Qaeda.
Isn’t it wonderful that major Western news outlets are so well connected that they have such sources?
The video is promised to be available at noon tomorrow (October 1) at noon, GMT. We will add the link when it becomes available.
In Whit Stillman’s 1994 film Barcelona, two American cousins, salesman Ted Boynton (Taylor Nichols) and Navy lieutenant Fred Boynton (Chris Eigeman) become involved with local girls Montserrat (Tushka Bergen) and Marta (Mira Sorvino), only to discover that both girls are also sleeping with Ramon, a glib anti-American journalist.
Discussing the situation with Montserrat, Fred makes a crucial discovery.
Montserrat: Ramon might not be as bad as you think. There’s a reason he has so many women. (pause) He has a problem.
Fred: What?
Monserrat: After he knows a woman well, he can’t have sex with her well.
Fred: He has a sexual impotence problem of some kind?
Montserrat: Of some kind.
Fred: That’s terrible. Poor guy. It explains a lot.
Montserrat: What?
Fred: It’s well-known that anti-Americanism has its roots in sexual impotence.
Recognition of the widespread nature of the problem is clearly growing, as this Levitra commercial features a new spokesman. (Warning: vulgarity)
Reuters quotes a broadcast from Al-Aribiya Television which has received a report from an unnamed Taliban official responding to the French reports of Osama bin Laden’s death last August.
The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true,” said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya’s Islamabad correspondent. “The Taliban checked with members who are close to al Qaeda that these reports are baseless.”
Bill Clinton’s recent explosion of indignation at Chris Wallace has provoked considerable commentary. And the bad news kept on coming, when that Sunday Fox News meltdown produced rebuttal testimony which Clinton does not need. Michael Rule reports that this morning, on CBS’s the Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked Michael F. Scheuer, former chief of the Osama bin Laden Unit at the CIA Counterterrorist Center whether Clinton has been telling the truth.
Let’s talk about what President Clinton had to say on Fox yesterday. He basically laid blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that Osama bin Laden was responsible for a number of different attacks. Does that ring true to you?”
and Scheuer responded:
No, sir, I don’t think so. The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impugnity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That’s the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden.
A French Intelligence leak reveals that the Saudi Intelligence service believes it has good information that Osama bin Laden died on August 23 in a remote location in Pakistan of typhoid fever.
AP provides an English version of the French story:
L’Est Republicain… the daily newspaper for the Lorraine region in eastern France printed what it described as a confidential document from the French foreign intelligence service DGSE citing an uncorroborated report from Saudi secret services that the leader of the al-Qaida terror network had died.
The contents of the document, dated Sept. 21, or Thursday, were not confirmed by French or other intelligence sources. However, the DGSE transmitted the note to President Jacques Chirac and other officials, the newspaper said.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie “has demanded an investigation be carried out of this leak,” a ministry statement said, adding that transmission of the confidential document could risk punishment.
Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau, clarifying the statement, said that the DGSE document exists but that its contents – that bin Laden is allegedly dead – cannot be confirmed.
The DGSE, or Direction Generale des Services Exterieurs, indicated that its information came from a single source.
“According to a reliable source, Saudi security services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead,” said the intelligence report.
There have been periodic reports of bin Laden’s illness or death in recent years but none has been proven accurate.
According to this document, Saudi security services were pursuing further details, notably the place of his burial.
“The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006,” the document says. His geographic isolation meant that medical assistance was impossible, the French report said, adding that his lower limbs were allegedly paralyzed. On Sept. 4, Saudi security services had their first information on bin Laden’s alleged death, the unconfirmed document reported.
In Pakistan, a senior official of that country’s top spy agency, the ISI or Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence, said he had no information to confirm bin Laden’s whereabouts or that he might be dead. The official said he believed the report could be fabricated. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. Embassy officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan also said they could not confirm the French report.
Date of Birth Used: May 25, 1963 Hair: Brown
Place of Birth: Kuwait Eyes: Brown
Height: 6’0″ Sex: Male
Weight: 209 pounds Complexion: Olive
Remarks: El-Maati may be wearing a full beard and mustache. He requires corrective lenses and may be wearing eyeglasses.
DETAILS
Amer El-Maati is being sought in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States.
SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS
This individual is reportedly associated with Adnan Al-Shukri Juma, El Shukrijumah in the Second Wave Attacks.
According to Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (Bin Laden’s biographer, and the only journalist to obtain a Bin Laden interview post 9/11), Al Qaeda has successfully smuggled and deployed in the United States nuclear weapons, along with “many kilos” of enriched uranium to be used to produce “dirty bombs.”
An attack on a major US target is rumored to scheduled for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, beginning this year on September 24. Previous rumors suggest that Los Angeles (or, at any rate, a location in California) may be the intended target.
In an interview with Al.Arabiya.net, reported by Aki today, Hamid Mir said that on a recent trip to Afghanistan he heard Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters speaking of an imminent attack on the United States “larger than 11 September 2001 attacks.”
Al Qaeda is reported to have enough material for six dirty bombs already in the United States.
Three suitcase nuclear bombs are said to have been smuggled from Russia into Europe. The bombs were said by an Afghan official to have been supplied to Al Qaeda in revenge for US support of the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union in 1980s. The bombs were last believed to have been in Italy in 2000. Al Qaeda’s original intention was to use Chechen terrorists to smuggle them into London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
The leader of the impending US attack will be a Saudi national named Adnan Al-Shukri Juma, student of nuclear engineering formerly employed at the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor for research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. A so-far-unsuccessful manhunt has been underway for Shukri Jumah since 2003.
In a Canada Free Press interview last May, Hamid Mir said that Bin Laden placed 42 sleeper agents in the United States prior to September 11, 2001. 19 were used in the 9/11 attacks, and 23 are still waiting to be activated.
The theory that Al Qaeda would undertake a major attack at the end of 2006 does fit perfectly the timetable of the famous Seven Phase Plan.
UPDATE
The LA Times story gives more information on the suspected plot leader, and a different way of spelling his name: Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah.
ABC’s redacted Path to 9/11 concluded tonight. All sophisticated viewers, I think, agree with John Fund, that, however slightly fictionalized, docudramas based on events within living memory are a fundamentally bad idea. There is simply no legitimate way to combine the needs of theatre with factuality.
Although I’m no admirer of the genre, I thought Path to 9/11 was not entirely a bad thing. It seemed to me that the television mini-series represented our culture’s collective unconsciousness, whispering in our ear a (basically valid) warning about the sclerotic tendencies of large institutions faced with unprecedented challenges. I don’t think any of the purported facts were terribly far off the mark, and the spectacular reaction of William Jefferson Clinton, a number of officials from his administration, and the Democrat Congressional leadership was every bit as entertaining as the program.
The Washington Post is running an article on Sunday titled Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold’ which sheds light on why Pakistan is withdrawing from Waziristan, and why it is not possible to track terrorist targets in the region.
At least 23 senior anti-Taliban tribesmen have been assassinated in South and North Waziristan since May 2005. “Al-Qaeda footprints were found everywhere,” Interior Minister Sherpao said in a recent interview. “They kidnapped and chopped off heads of at least seven of these pro-government tribesmen.”
Send in the Marines would be my advice. Waziristan is good hunting country.
