Author: Martin Kramer

Predict this

On By Martin Kramer

From Martin Kramer, “Jihad 101,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2002, pp. 87-95. Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

Who even imagined the possibility of a September 11? Well, you might say, Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes did. Well, you are wrong. Richard Bulliet, professor of Islamic history and past director of Columbia University’s Middle East Institute, now claims that the academic “experts” on Islam had seen it coming all along. In recent years, “a torrent of studies of Islamic movements and political currents gushed from academic and journalistic presses around the world,” wrote Bulliet, in an essay for a website.

There is little to indicate, however, that any government policy horses chose to drink from the fresh scholarly water poured in their trough. On September 11, 2001, therefore, while a substantial number of analysts in the scholarly world could honestly claim that they had seen and understood the handwriting on the wall, even if the message had not included the date, place, and time of the actual attacks, very few people in the policy community could make the same claim.1

Now perhaps I haven’t read enough in the literature this past decade, but I cannot conjure up a single scholarly analysis that acknowledged even the existence of a wall, let alone the handwriting on it. Of course, in Bulliet’s case, one never knows what constitutes a prediction: this is someone who claims he predicted the Iranian revolution—in a novel.2 But there have been plenty of conventional predictions in recent scholarly writing, and they all pointed away from terrorism as an Islamist option. And while the policy community will have to answer for itself, it would be impossible for officials to have been more negligent than the academics.

So, Bulliet has the chutzpah of a true New Yorker. After all, a few introspective academics have admitted to missing the trends that led to September 11. They excuse themselves by claiming that the FBI and CIA did no better, despite their vast resources—an argument with some merit. Bulliet’s claim is much more sweeping: he says the academics got it right and fed that knowledge to government, which ignored it. This is a serious charge, and it cannot be left sitting unsubstantiated on a website. This column urges Professor Bulliet to assemble the mystery analyses and publish them. If he doesn’t, consider this more of the wind that has blown off Morningside Heights ever since Edward Said discovered himself.

Which reminds me: do give credit to Bulliet for one of the more quotable quotes to follow September 11. “Does this mean I’m throwing my copy of [Edward Said’s] Orientalism out the window?” he quipped to a student forum in the first week after the attacks. “Maybe it does.”3 That would be a good start.

1 Richard W. Bulliet, “Theorizing Islam,” at http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/bulliet.htm.
2 Richard W. Bulliet, “Twenty Years of Islamic Politics,” Middle East Journal, Spring 1999, p. 189. His (thoroughly enjoyable) novel: The Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
3 Lionel Beehner, “SIPA Students, Faculty React to Terrorist Attacks,” The SIPA Communiqué, Sept. 4-19, 2001.

Osama Blockbuster

On By Martin Kramer

This article by Martin Kramer was published at National Review Online on December 14, 2001. Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

The video released Thursday is overwhelming evidence for the role of Osama bin Laden as mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11. Its effect nearly everywhere will be to persuade viewers that he was responsible for initiating the attacks. And his own words attest that his role went beyond inspiring the perpetrators. Bin Laden claims in the video to have been in regular communication with the operatives themselves. He professes to have known the logistical plan, the timing, and the participants in the hijackings. In the video’s most hideous segment, he tells his guests that he was the most “optimistic” of the planners, believing that the planes crashing into the World Trade Center would bring down all the floors above impact.

If by some misfortune, bin Laden is captured and not killed, this video will be prime evidence for the prosecution. Certainly its effect on opinion in the West will be to silence all those who claim that the “war on terror” could be a case of mistaken identity. But what of Arab and Muslim opinion? Some hope has been expressed that the release of the video will impact the so-called “Arab street,” which is ritually skeptical of American claims. In many places in the Arab world, doubts have been expressed about bin Laden’s role, and in some places elaborate conspiracy theories have flourished, attributing the attacks to just about everyone but Arab hijackers. Will it make a difference to these doubters when bin Laden is overheard openly boasting of his triumph?

The answer depends on the Arabs in question. They fall into three broad categories.

Those Arabs who decided long ago that the Mossad engineered the attacks are beyond the influence of any evidence. They live in a world haunted by dark conspiracies, where hidden hands move everything. To their minds, a fake video would be a perfect tool in the conspiracy against Islam. They will claim that the video has been staged or doctored — that it is black propaganda meant to dupe the Muslims. Certainly there will be many who doubt the video’s authenticity. They will assert that a technological superpower would have no difficulty faking the entire scene.

Then there are bin Laden’s admirers — those who have celebrated the attacks of September 11. They will welcome the video, since it confirms that bin Laden is not some false idol of their own making, but the authentic author of the blow delivered by Muslim “martyrs” to an arrogant America. Of course, had the video been released a month ago, their joy would have been unmitigated. Now it is mixed with the realization that their “true Islam” also paid a heavy price for September 11: the destruction of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the ideal Islamic regime. They had expected America to suffer yet another blow in Afghanistan. Instead, the Taliban collapsed, many Arab fighters were slaughtered, and bin Laden was put to flight. Perhaps there will even be a few who will see bin Laden on video, and curse him for his own obvious arrogance, and his cocky self-assurance, as though God were guiding his every act.

Between these two extremes, there is a sizeable body of opinion that takes this view: yes, Muslims were responsible for September 11; no, bin Laden had nothing to do with it. In this view, America jumped to a convenient conclusion: It needed to hammer somebody to quench its thirst for revenge, and bin Laden fit the bill. The entire Afghan war, in this view, is a case of mistaken identity. If there were a conspiracy, bin Laden had little to do with it; America simply used him as a pretext for waging a war it had long wanted to wage in Afghanistan.

This argument has rested, in part, on the notion that bin Laden was incapable of mounting such an operation in the first place. A version of this notion, as filtered through American academe, can be found in a statement by Fawaz Gerges, a chaired professor at Sarah Lawrence University, made immediately after the attacks. (Gerges had just returned from two years in the Middle East, where he researched Islamic movements on the dime of the MacArthur Foundation.)

I doubt it very much if Bin Laden is capable now and on his own of masterminding such complex and well-coordinated attacks in the heartland of America and in several U.S. cities. He has been under siege for the last few years. The United States has committed considerable resources to restricting his movements and reach. All his resources are monitored minute by minute. We have an army of agents keeping track of every move of his. Although the Taliban have refused his requests to expel him from Afghanistan, they have restricted his movements and kept him under a tight leash.

(In July 2000, the same Gerges told the Washington Post: “Osama bin Laden is really a spent force. He has little support outside Afghanistan. He is in a state of siege by the U.S. and other intelligence organizations.”)

In fact, the United States never claimed to have bin Laden under a “state of siege,” or to be capable of “tracking his every move,” “minute by minute.” This is not the case now, and it was not the case then. But those who did believe this, especially in the Arab world, have refused to accept even the possibility of bin Laden’s responsibility for September 11.

If the video has any impact in the Arab and Muslim worlds, it will have it upon these viewers. They will squirm in discomfort on viewing an Osama bin Laden completely at odds with their prior assumptions. Here is a man in command, and a commander in the know, meeting freely with visitors, and boasting openly of his role. He does so without the slightest fear that anyone might be monitoring his words. Here is a man who supposedly refused to allow any electrical equipment in his presence (it might betray his location) gabbing away in front of someone’s home video camera. Here is a man who appears absolutely confident that he is safe and secure in Taliban hands — even after September 11. In the famous bin Laden recruitment video, it was clear that he would; in this video, he makes it clear that he could — and did.

Of course, it is always possible that many of these viewers will write off the video as a fake, or assert that despite bin Laden’s confession, he could not have done it. Arab journalists and intellectuals are notoriously impervious to evidence. But there are a few who have suspended judgment on the war — pretty much the most one could have hoped for. The video offers them a ladder down from the fence, and provides them with ammunition they can use against their critics.

There is one more aspect worth emphasizing. The Taliban, it will be recalled, professed a willingness to turn over bin Laden, provided the United States gave proof of his responsibility. Yet bin Laden himself, right under their noses and before a large group, boasted of his responsibility. The Taliban must have known this, and probably knew of everything else, quite conceivably in advance. The video is thus an indirect but persuasive indictment of bin Laden’s hosts, whose removal from power was a stated American war aim — and one that has already been achieved.

So it is useful to have the video, and it is good that it was released. But the most effective American propaganda was and remains this: victory. So far, the war has done much to restore awe for America in the Arab and Muslim worlds — an awe that had been eroded by years of irresolution. As bin Laden put it in the video: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” America is now the strong horse. Some Arabs and Muslims may not like it, but they do fear it, and that is nearly as good.

Likewise, it’s great to have bin Laden indicting himself on film. But it’s no substitute for the real flesh-and-blood bin Laden. When he next appears on video, he should be either dead or blindfolded — and the impact of that scene on Arab opinion will be indisputable.

From Afghanistan to Araby

On By Martin Kramer

This article by Martin Kramer appeared in National Review Online on December 10, 2001. Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

Will September 11 be remembered as a watershed in the Middle East? The answer to that question now depends on one factor only: the determination of the United States.

As it stands now, the answer is “no.” The terrorist hijackers of 9/11 were Arab Muslims from Saudi Arabia and Egypt — from the Middle East. But the actual conflict has been played out far above the heads of Middle Easterners. Afghanistan is to the Middle East what Alaska once was to North America — a remote and wild frontier, a place people know only by reputation, a redoubt where people go to hide. In the first weeks after the attacks, when the focus was on the hijackers and Islam, the Middle East seethed. But after October 7, when the bombing campaign began, the “war against terror” became an Afghan-U.S. war — and the Middle East tuned out.

While Americans pored over maps looking for Kunduz or Kandahar, people in the Middle East went back to business as usual. In recent weeks, demonstrations have fallen off to zero. The fabled “Arab street” is quiescent. Press reports of the war have been moved to the inside pages. And now that the Taliban are out and Osama is on the run, people are putting a distance between themselves and yesterday’s heroes. After all, the Taliban and Osama have been defeated. You don’t get idolized in the Arab world by losing.

Of course, there have been repercussions. The United States is asking Arab governments to freeze the funds of terrorist-supporting organizations. But the banking system in these countries is hardly transparent, and there isn’t any sure way to know whether the terrorists’ funds are really drying up. Yes, the United States is demanding that incitement be stopped in the religious schools in places like Saudi Arabia. But who is going to enforce and monitor this? Yes, Americans talk of political reform in the closed polities of the region. But who is going to press hard for change, when political openings seem most likely to benefit Osama look-alikes?

There is nothing here the Arabs can’t avoid by the usual combination of prevarication, obfuscation, and procrastination. They managed to torpedo a “new Middle East” engineered by America and based on peace with Israel. They can foil a “new Middle East” promoted by America and structured around the war against terror. And let there be no doubt: The Arabs have no interest in seeing their world reorganized around the needs and requirements of this war. The Arabs are always accused of terror, and so they are unenthusiastic about acknowledging America’s right to define it. A prime motive for their joining the coalition has been to influence that definition, and deflect it from themselves.

So 9/11 is not regarded in the Middle East as a great watershed. It is just another trial or tribulation to be endured until things can get back to normal — if there is anything normal about the combination of despotism, religious incitement, and tolerance of terror that is unique to the Middle East.

Well, you say, that isn’t good enough. They had better recognize that we are in a new ballgame, and that the rules have changed. They had better realize that if the United States went to the trouble of removing a regime 7,000 miles from its shores, in a remote and landlocked country, then the United States means business.

To which the Arabs say: Maybe — but it has yet to be proven in the Middle East. The Taliban have been kicked out? So what? America is much more cautious in the Middle East. Just look around the region, which is full of serial defiers of America, people who were once “enemy number one” and who still walk free. At the top of the list is Saddam Hussein, the living and breathing monument to defiance of America. Next is the Iranian regime, or those within it, and their allies in Hezbollah, who hit America time and again in the 1980s. Then comes Libya’s Qaddafi (exactly one Libyan operative went to jail for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie).

The American victory in Afghanistan has made the Arabs uneasy, no doubt about it. But they reassure themselves by saying: Arabs aren’t Afghans. The Taliban were loathed as barbarians, and sat in the middle of nowhere. But the Arabs have friends everywhere; there is a lot of oil under their feet; and the Americans want stability and quiet. They won’t dare to push us too far.

Making 9/11 a turning point in the Middle East will require a lot more than the demonstration effect of the Afghan victory. (And that victory, by the way, isn’t complete until Osama’s head is on a pike.) For 9/11 to count in the Arab world, the United States is going to have to show its determination in the Middle East itself. In particular, it’s going to have to do two things: first, prove that it won’t tolerate rogues going about unsupervised while they plan some future Armageddon; and second, show that the terrorists flourishing in the dark corners of the Middle East and working against the region’s stability are no safer than the al Qaeda crowd.

To achieve the first, spiking the guns of the rogues, the United States has no alternative but to turn up the heat on Saddam Hussein. If 9/11 is to mean anything in the Middle East, it has to mean something for the future of Saddam. No one knows for sure whether Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, but it doesn’t matter. If he is not dealt with now, the day might come when the entire Middle East will have to place an emergency call to Washington. Saddam may be the only leader in the region with the will, the way, and the lack of restraint needed to plunge the region into a cataclysm. The United States has an advantage now, and it should not fail to press it. The Arabs and the Europeans will whine and warn through the build-up to D-Day. But if the United States is resolute, they will fall into line. They usually do.

Then there is the second goal: getting the terrorists out of the Middle East itself. By the Arabs’ account, there are no terrorists in the Middle East. There are only “resistance” groups — like Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. When they kill civilians with suicide bombers, this is merely legitimate struggle against occupation.

If the United States allows the so-called “Arab street” to define what is and is not terrorism, then to the Middle East, 9/11 will have changed nothing. The American definition should be unequivocal: These three groups are terrorists with a global reach. In the case of Hezbollah, the case is clear enough — less than a decade ago, they brought down two buildings in another “American” city, Buenos Aires, killing hundreds. But if anyone thinks that a suicide bomb in Jerusalem or Haifa is not felt around the globe, they haven’t heard yet about globalization. The actions of these groups undermine the stability of the entire region, because they bring it closer to war. And a Middle East closer to war is likelier to become a Middle East where Americans and American interests will be endangered.

In this respect, the Palestinian response to the terror attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa is not just a test. It’s the final exam. We have now seen the first major wave of post-September 11 terrorism. The Arabs are poised on the edge of their seats to see whether anything has changed, or whether the “resistance” can go on blowing up Israeli Jews as usual.

If it can, then General Zinni might as well pack his bags. The United States should hold a “victory in Afghanistan” parade on Fifth Avenue, and then try to forget the whole episode. But if the war against terrorism is about anything, it is about zero tolerance for paradise-obsessed suicide bombers taking themselves and innocent victims to fiery deaths. And the people who have to acknowledge this are not Brazilians or Australians. First and foremost, they are the Arabs, whose societies have tolerated the creation of production lines for suicide terrorists. The message of the United States on this point has to be unequivocal: Hamas and Jihad are Osama and the al Qaeda. Whoever allows such terrorists to flourish under his roof will be Talibanized. Not next year. Not next month. Now.

Will 9/11 be a watershed in the Middle East? If the United States leaves it to the Middle East, the answer will be “no.” But it might become a “yes” — if America only shows the same resolve in Araby that it has shown in Afghanistan.