Terrorism's
murky origins
By
Bruce Fein
At present, little is known of the circumstances which
give birth to terrorists. The periodic reports issued by
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the
United States (National Commission), for instance, are
bereft of clues for diminishing terrorist recruits.
Until this dearth of knowledge is overcome, the best way
to handcuff terrorism is by killing, capturing and
punishing terrorists period, with no commas, semicolons
or question marks. To paraphrase Churchill on democracy,
it is a poor counterterrorism policy, except for all
others that have been imagined or attempted.
Terrorism is the employment of indiscriminate
violence to cow or intimidate a civilian population to
achieve a morally squalid political objective. The
scourge has plagued mankind from the beginning. Its
incidence has both climbed and fallen at various
intervals without self-evident explanations. In
contemporary times, Islamic terrorism has surged, but
short of monopolizing the terrorism landscape. Timothy
McVeigh did not bomb the
Oklahoma City courthouse to honor the Holy Koran. But
the predominance of Islamic terrorists justifies a
corresponding counterterrorism exploration of their
motivations.
The United
States' support for Israel has been said to explain the
September 11 abominations and complementary terrorist
attacks against
United States
citizens and property. But that Israeli support
stretches back 56 years to 1948, the year of Israel's
birth in conjunction with a United Nations authorized
Palestinian state. In 1973, then-President Richard M.
Nixon placed the military on high alert to deter Soviet
assistance to Egypt during the Yom Kippur war. Yet no
retaliatory Islamic terrorism ensued. Resort was had to
a non-violent oil embargo. In contrast, the terrorist
bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City
unfolded in 1993, the same year the Oslo Accords
promised a viable two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The United States awakened no applause in the
Islamic world for preventing Israeli counterattacks
against Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. And
according to the National Commission, even the Taliban's
Mullah Omar opposed the September 11 terrorism despite
the U.S.-Israeli connection. It amplified: "Although bin
Laden wanted the operation to proceed as soon as
possible, several senior al Qaeda figures thought they
should follow the position taken by their Afghan host,
Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who opposed attacking the
United States." In sum, United States support for Israel
does not persuasively correlate with Islamic terrorism.
Neither does poverty or an absence of education.
Osama bin Laden himself is wealthy and sophisticated.
Four key Western-educated September 11 conspirators were
privileged. The National Commission elaborates: "The
four were Mohamed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah
and Ramzi Binalshibh. Atta, Shehhi and Jarrah would
become pilots for the 9/11 attacks, while Binalshibh
would act as a key coordinator for the plot.
"Atta . . . was born in Egypt in 1968 and moved to
Germany to study in 1992 after graduating from Cairo
University. Shehhi was from the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
and entered Germany in 1996 through a UAE military
scholarship program. Jarrah was from a wealthy family in
Lebanon and went to Germany after high school to study
at the University of Greifswald. Finally, Binalshibh, a
Yemeni, arrived in Germany in 1995."
The foot soldiers or "muscle hijackers" of September
11 sported variegated backgrounds. Aged between 20 and
28, many were unemployed and without higher education.
But a few had commenced university studies. Some were
pious, while others consumed alcohol and abused drugs.
The National Commission adds: "It has not been
determined exactly how each of them was recruited into
al Qaeda, but most of them apparently were swayed to
join the jihad in Chechnya by contacts at local
universities and mosques in Saudi Arabia."
John Walker Lindh, "American Taliban," was more
coddled than deprived. Ramzi Yousef, a lead operative in
the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the
foiled Manila plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial
aircraft in 1995 was not the child of misery.
Terrorism against the United States is neither
ignited by economic hardship nor by illiteracy. And even
if these correlations were established, the United
States would be generally impotent to cure these ills in
Islamic nations, for example, Pakistan or Indonesia.
Neither the foreign nor domestic policies of the
United States explain Islamic terrorism. Muslims have
been militarily defended in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Humanitarian aid was showered on Somalia. Under the
aegis of the United States, the governing charters of
Afghanistan and Iraq celebrate Islamic tenets as the
supreme law of the land. Russian human rights violations
in Chechnya are regularly denounced.
In the aftermath of September 11, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation established a special unit to
investigate crimes against Muslim citizens or residents
in apparent revenge for September 11. Women may wear
headscarves or other signature Islamic garb in public or
private places, in contrast to the school restrictions
in France. Law enforcement resources devoted to
counterterrorism have focused on Muslims only in
proportion to the Islamic percentage of all terrorist
related crimes. Abuses have been investigated and
frequently sanctioned.
Terrorists have not been motivated by cravings for
democracy.
On February 23, 1998, bin Laden and the leader of
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman Zawahiri, published a
fatwa announcing a "ruling to kill Americans and their
allies," both "civilians and military." The chilling
decree added that it was "an individual duty for every
Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is
possible to do it." The fatwa omitted any list of
grievances ala the Declaration of Independence
purporting to justify such savagery. Neither did bin
Laden then nor thereafter specify actions of the United
States that would trigger a cessation of anti-American
al Qaeda terrorism, for example, an ending of support
for non-democratic Islamic regimes that govern in Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Indeed, no Islamic
terrorist has claimed democratic freedoms and the rule
of law as objectives. Taliban's Afghanistan was the
antithesis of democracy. Turkey has not been spared from
Islamic terrorism despite its blossoming democratic
dispensation and a prime minister whose Muslim
credentials are above suspicion.
Al Qaeda and brother terrorists and sympathizers
live in a demonic intellectual and moral world alien to
western civilization. A substantial percentage daftly
insists that September 11 was perpetrated by the CIA and
Jews. Since reasoning is futile, killing, capturing and
punishing is the only moral answer to the terrorism
wickedness.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and
international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates
and The Lichfield Group.
Source: The Washington Times
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