Redstate

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This series takes on the 500+ page 9/11 Commission Report in a more or less

chapter-by-chapter fashion and is intended to give you a breakdown of the main points

and revelations (along with some commentary, of course) that weren't necessarily

hitherto available in the public sphere. Presented as a civic public service by

Red State. Enjoy, and learn.

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Chapter Two, pages 47-70

THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM

This chapter is mostly a historical backgrounder detailing the rise of the al Qaeda

network and Osama bin Laden himself. The Report does not deliver on many details

hitherto unknown to the public, but it does make some revealing clarifications and

explanations.

Read on.

The Report delivers an analysis and exposition of Islam that is fairly basic and

more or less accurate. The Report notes that Muslims tend to feel humiliated for a

variety of reasons (it is, by the bye, no substitute for Bernard Lewis's "The Crisis

of Islam"), mostly having to do with a perceived loss of cultural and religious

identity, and political impotence in the face of an ascendant West.

The Report notes that the reimposition of a universal Caliphate and a return to

"true" Islam are central pillars of bin Laden's advocacy. On the subject of that

advocacy, it is useful to quote the Report verbatim on Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian

Islamist whose teachings deeply inform bin Laden's ideology:

Three basic themes emerge from Qutb’s writings. First, he claimed that

the
world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he
called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the

revelations
given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can
choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people,
including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts
than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam.Third,
no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God
and Satan.All Muslims -- as he defined them -- therefore must take up arms in
this fight.Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy
of destruction.

From this, bin Laden's grievances against America and his war aims emerge:

Bin Ladin shares Qutb’s stark view....

[Bin Ladin and al Qaeda] say that America had attacked Islam; America is

responsible for all
conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight
with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians fight with
Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims
in its southern islands.America is also held responsible for the governments
of Muslim countries, derided by al Qaeda as “your agents.”

....al Qaeda’s answer [to those asking how to end the conflict] was that America

should abandon
the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness
of its society and culture:

The Report then descends into a conceptual incoherence perceptible only to students

of both Islam and its recent history. In the course of the previously-mentioned

contextualization, the most crucial contexts of all -- the twin doctrines of jihad

and dhimmi -- are completely unmentioned. An explanation of Islamic terror that

wholly ignores the very fonts of theologically-justified violence and subjugation

of non-Muslims is ultimately worthless to the reader seeking first causes of these

evils. Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden, and their murderous followers are not sui

generis: they sprang from a culture and a faith that condones their evils in some

form in some circumstances. What is perhaps novel is their interpretation of those

circumstances. The Report states that "Bin Ladin used Islam’s most extreme,

fundamentalist traditions as his match." Yet these unnamed "traditions" are hardly

extreme -- they are doctrines of the orthodox faith in both the Shi'a and Sunni

sects.

The Report then says something that is, for lack of a better word, ignorant:

Most Muslims prefer a peaceful and inclusive vision of their faith, not

the
violent sectarianism of Bin Ladin....Beyond the theology lies the simple human fact

that most Muslims, like
most other human beings, are repelled by mass murder and barbarism whatever
their justification.

Both these statements are false. An Islamic world that can barely handle free

religious pluralism (even in its model democracies and semi-democracies such as

Turkey and Jordan, non-Muslims are hardly co-equal citizens) is not an Islamic

world that prefers a "peaceful and inclusive vision of their faith." An Islamic

world that produces celebrations on 9/11, generally endorses suicide attacks

against Israelis, and consistently polls Osama bin Laden himself as an admired

figure, cannot be said to contain a majority of persons who are "repelled by mass

murder and barbarism whatever their justification." An Islamic world in which

wayward women and apostates are routinely killed, in which public executions are

distressingly common, in which women are fairly often subjected to social

subjugation, and in which Nazism and its trappings are still considered legitimate

political choices cannot be said to eschew "barbarism whatever its justification,"

or at least cannot be said to have a definition of "barbarism" that we would

recognize. On a broader scale, it cannot even be said to be universally true of

"most other human beings" that they are "repelled by mass murder": at best, based

upon the work of men like Dave Grossman and Jonathan Shay, we can say that most

human beings have an instinctive aversion to actual firsthand killing -- not

to the idea of killing, nor to the act of sending others to do so. These latter

things are functions of conscience and culture. A Report implying that Muslims as

a whole have an adequate amount of positive doses of either is a Report that hasn't

been paying attention to the very subject it purports to report upon.

Chapter Two is a real credibility-killer.

We then move on to the nature and origins of bin Laden's organization. Following

his arrival in Afghanistan in the 1980s (he was, it seems, seeking purpose and a

mission in God's eyes), it became apparent that his genius lay in understanding the

financial arrangements necessary to prosecute jihad. He was adept at soliciting

funds from Saudi and Persian Gulf donors, recruitment, and disbursal of funds to

mujahidin outfits. This experience was what taught him how to run an

international, extralegal organization. Conspiracy theorists take note: despite

the hoary leftist cliche, the Report explicitly states that bin Laden received

little or no assistance from the United States in this period.

The jihadist-financing network that bin Laden built was called al Qaeda.

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden and his organization

elected to accept a 1989 invitation from the Sudanese government to move wholesale

to the Sudan, wherein the government would provide safe haven in exchange for al

Qaeda assistance in both infrastructure development and in the extermination

campaign against southern Sudanese Christians. The acceptance of this invitation

was spurred by two developments: bin Laden's public denunciation of the Saudi

state's acceptance of American soldiers in the Arabian peninsula in 1991, and that

same state's retaliatory stripping of bin Laden's passport from him while he was in

Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was able to flee to the Sudan with the assistance of "a

dissident member of the [Saudi] royal family." The Report does not tell us who

this Saudi royal is.

It was in the Sudan that bin Laden began to explicitly conceive of himself as the

leader of a worldwide Muslim army primarily oriented against the United States. He

transformed al Qaeda into a broad-based umbrella group with liaisons and

coordination with terror groups around the planet. Al Qaeda's reach extended even

into the United States, where it utilized the connections of a preexisting jihadist

network called al Khifa to preach and recruit American Muslims from mosques in

Brooklyn, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittburgh and Tucson. Some of these American

Muslim recruits went on to participate in al Qaeda terror attacks of the 1990s.

The Report does not here mention what role this American Islamic terror

infrastructure may have played in the 9/11 attacks.

The first suspected al Qaeda attacks against Americans were ineffectual December

1992 bombings in Aden, Yemen, thought to be aimed against American soldiers en

route to Somalia. Al Qaeda then set up a command center in Nairobi, Kenya, from

which arms, money, and trainers were sent to the Somali anti-American jihadists.

Most of the senior tactical leadership of al Qaeda rotated through Somalia at this

time, and they took credit for the success of their drive to expel the United

States from that nation. The Report does not here address whether the Americans

were aware of this al Qaeda campaign.

The 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia is said by the

Report to bear the marks of both Iranian and al Qaeda involvement. The Report does

not elaborate upon this statement. It is only the first mention of Iranian

collusion with Osama bin Laden.

The second mention swiftly follows. It is here worth quoting the Report verbatim:

In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan
between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate
in providing support—even if only training—for actions carried out primarily
against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda
operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the
fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for
further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security....As will

be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued
in ensuing years.

Later in the Report, it is revealed that the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa were perpetrated with direct Hezbollah, and hence Iranian, assistance.

Agreeing that the U.S. embassy in Nairobi was an easy
target because a car bomb could be parked close by, they began to form a plan.
Al Qaeda had begun developing the tactical expertise for such attacks months
earlier, when some of its operatives—top military committee members and several
operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them—were sent
to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.

The Report also mentions several contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, including one

in 1999 in which the Iraqis reportedly offered to allow al Qaeda a safe haven of

operations within Iraq. The contacts are sufficient in number, level and duration

to establish the previous Iraqi regime as a dangerous rogue regime willing and even

actively seeking to consort with any anti-American terror group. On the other

hand, the public evidence at this point in the Report clearly points to Iran,

Pakistan, the Taliban's Afghanistan and the Sudan as the far more active state

abettors and partners of al Qaeda. This is, though, admittedly due in part to bin

Laden's decision to establish his post-Sudan base in Afghanistan rather than the

proffered Iraqi alternative. If Ba'athist Iraq did not rise to the level of

complicity with al Qaeda that other regimes did, it was not for lack of trying.

The end for al Qaeda in the Sudan came when the Egyptian Islamic Group, an al Qaeda

affiliate, attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The

Egyptians, previously content to let their neighbors harbor all manner of murderous

jihadists when they were only going after Americans and Jews, suddenly exhibited a

keen interest in seeing al Qaeda gone from its borders. The Khartoum regime was

forced to comply after a series of international sanctions were applied. Bin Laden

fled the Sudan in 1996 with al Qaeda's finances in disarray and his jihadist

reputation badly battered. He traveled on a leased aircraft that was allowed to

refuel in the United Arab Emirates before landing in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

It was here that the Pakistani government stepped in to assist Osama bin Laden in

the rebuilding of al Qaeda. Again, the Report speaks:

It is unlikely that Bin Ladin could have returned to Afghanistan had

Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had
advance knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his

travel....Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Ladin to

Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of

control over camps near Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand

the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri militants.

Al Qaeda's reconstituted camps and financial networks quickly yielded the results the Pakistanis hoped for. The Report estimates that between ten and twenty thousand jihadists passed through them in 1996-2001. This surfeit of fanatics under direct al Qaeda control coincided with a shift in operational direction for the organization: starting with the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the group moved from a support and coordination role in terror attacks to a direct execution capability.

Chapter two ends with an account of the 1998 attacks in Africa. As we consider it, several lessons present themselves:

There remains a serious inability or unwillingness within the American public and political class to forthrightly grasp the true sources of Islamist violence against us. This will inevitably hinder both analysis and strategy as we prosecute this war.

Contrary to the theorizing of many, al Qaeda does not represent a "new" type of terrorism. Throughout its evolution, we see it repeatedly dependent upon state sponsors for territorial haven and financial support. Though the Report does not mention this, its model as an umbrella organization for disparate terror groups is reminiscent of the various Red and Black terror groupings of the 1970s and 1980s (see, for example, the infamous seconding-out of Japanese Red Army terrorists to Palestinian terror groups in that era, among others). It is also somewhat reminiscent of the coordinating and directive role played by the Soviet Union in its sponsorship of those groups. A logical response to this model is therefore to knock out the state props -- being the identifiable, static elements -- of the network.

The Report briefly touches upon and then elides the subject of Saudi complicity with al Qaeda. Given what we know from other sources, the omission is glaring.

It becomes increasingly difficult to see how we can avoid going to war with Iran.

Next: COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES