In
an erev Shabbat email, a friend in metro-NY commented that he was surprised that
al-Qaida’s 9/11/2001 attack on the US homeland had not been repeated.
That
got me thinking. Why was that?
I
mean, besides the fact that the terrorists who planned it – having lost their
safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan – were being hunted down and systematically
eliminated. And because America repaired the intelligence holes that enabled 9/11
in the first place.
Yet,
in a sense, a mega attack did not need to be repeated because the damage done
that day 21 years ago achieved its purpose beyond the wildest dreams of its despicable
perpetrators.
Who
would have imagined the ease with which 19 Jihadist terrorists could hijack
four American airliners? And while Islamist suicide bombers had struck many
times previously – who would have guessed that they would use civilian planes
like bomb-laden dump trucks?
Who
would have dreamt that both NYC WTC Towers would collapse in the resulting
infernos?
Who
would have thought that the Pentagon was so vulnerable? Who could have imagined
that America would suffer nearly 3,000 fatalities in one day?
Who
could have predicted that the attacks would forever alter the entire experience
of air travel?
9/11
still boggles the imagination.
A
comparatively small band of Muslim fanatics were able to plot and implement an
attack that ensnared the US in two dead-end wars.
So,
beyond the initial shock and destruction of the day itself, America was
stampeded into occupying two Muslim countries, Afghanistan (starting on October
7, 2001) and Iraq (March 20, 2003).
Occupations
that only added fuel to Muslim ire, victimization, and grievance.
The
long wars in these lands sapped American willpower and confidence once and for all.
Victory
might have been an option had the US been capable of making a WWII-like investment
– in personnel (reinstating the military draft), material, treasure, and a
willingness to stay for as many decades as it would take to reshape these fragmented
Islamic polities into Western democracies. In other words, victory was never an
option.
At
least in Afghanistan-Pakistan, al-Qaida 1.0 was destroyed.
However,
the invasion of Iraq proved to be a strategic blunder of historic proportions. Iraq
had nothing to do with 9/11. It had no weapons of mass destruction. Washington’s
presence empowered Shi’ite Persian Iran to flourish and pursue its imperialist
designs in the Middle East. As a consequence of the Iraq debacle, the US is psychically
powerless to stop Iran from fielding nuclear weapons when it chooses to do so.
Iraq/Afghanistan-Pakistan
exposed the desperation of both the Obama and Trump administrations to withdraw
America from the quagmire of endless unwinnable (on the cheap) wars (undeclared) in the Near East.
***
What
motivated the 9/11 attacks was Osama bin Laden’s anger that Saudi Arabia had
allowed debased Westerners to set up militarily in his adopted country. What
made the attacks achievable were the skills of Ayman al-Zawahiri. What united the
two was the decision to take the war for Islam’s soul to the West.
The
Islamist war against the West did not begin on 9/11 but with the first WTC bombing
in February 1993, accelerating with the East African embassy bombings of August
1998.
Al-Qaida
has served as a terror incubator – others like ISIS, regional spinoffs, and freelancers took up the banner of jihadist imperialism, among them the July 2005 London attackers and the May 2017 Manchester fanatics, plus those who carried out smaller-scale
explosions and stabbings in the UK, Europe and around the world. Let us not forget that British authorities thwarted scores of other attacks, such as the planned blowing up of
St Paul’s Cathedral in 2020.
Meanwhile, in America, while there have been “no more 9/11’s,” there have been many jihadist attacks
in the US since 2001. Here is a partial list https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-in-america/who-are-the-terrorists/
***
The danger will continue because the threat of violence is largely the result of an internal struggle within Islam over coming to grips with modernity. By that, I mean the notions of tolerance, respect for minorities, and democracy. Islam
has yet to experience civilizational reform (like Christianity and Judaism).
But
let us allow ourselves to imagine what a reformed Islam might look like: It would be comfortable sharing space with other peoples and faith traditions literally, spiritually, and symbolically. It would no longer seek to spread Dār al-Islam over what it considers Dār al-Ḥarb (the West and Israel).
We are not there
yet.
Further
Reading
Partial
Listing of Muslim Terror Attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks
The
Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/lawrence-wright
