Picking Up the Pieces

Peter L. Bergen

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002

Summary:  In three new books, experts explore every angle of September's horrific attacks. The warning signs, it seems, had long been evident. Herewith some strategies for how to read the signals next time -- and how to fight and win the new war on terror.

Peter L. Bergen is the author of Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden.

In fact, as Talbott and Chanda observe, Iranians responded to the attacks of September by holding two large candlelight vigils. By contrast, the Saudi defense minister told The New York Times in December that American news media coverage of the kingdom's links to Islamic extremism amounted to a "slanderous campaign."

The Middle East scholar Gregory Gause highlights the ambiguous position of the Saudis in his essay appropriately titled "The Kingdom in the Middle" (which appears in How Did This Happen?). As he explains, "[Saudi Arabia] is both a source, however indirect, of terror against the United States and a key American ally in the battle against that terror." Gause warns, however, that it may be dangerous for the United States to pressure the Saudis to reform. As he explains, "were elections to be held today in Saudi Arabia, they would be won by candidates whose worldview is closer to that of Osama bin Laden than to that of Thomas Jefferson." In such a short essay, of course, Gause can only scratch the surface of this rich issue. Those who want to know more should turn to Douglas Jehl's excellent recent reporting from Saudi Arabia in The New York Times and the Georgetown scholar Mamoun Fandy's authoritative study Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent.

THE MIND OF A KILLER

Michael Mandelbaum, now at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, uses his essay in How Did This Happen? to pour some much-needed cold water on the argument, beloved of the left, that the attacks were in some way the result of the socio-economic inequities between the West and the Muslim world. Such a notion fails all sorts of common-sense tests. For example: if the attacks were really about the poverty of Islamic countries, the hijackers should have been destitute Afghans or Africans -- not scions of the Egyptian and Saudi middle class. Instead, al Qaeda's top leaders were a surgeon from a prominent Egyptian family and a trust-fund baby from one of the richest families in the Saudi kingdom.

If the attackers were not motivated by economic discontent, then, what drove them? Religion, of course -- although not everyone is ready to fully admit the role of Islam in September's attacks. In her essay in How Did This Happen?, for example, the religion scholar Karen Armstrong doth protest too much when she says that the Koran tells Muslims they "may never initiate hostilities ... and aggressive warfare is always forbidden." Her claim is simply false. Some verses in the Koran, it is true, seem only to allow purely defensive wars: "Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those attacked, because they have been wronged." But the Koran also exhorts the believers to aggression: "When the Sacred Months are past, then kill the idolaters wherever you find them." Turn the other cheek this is not. Bin Laden, in fact, quoted this very verse when he declared his war against the West in 1998.

This religious motivation helps explain why al Qaeda unleashed such massive destruction in September, a quantum leap forward from conventional terrorism. Rand's Brian Jenkins elucidates this important point: "in the past, terrorists could have killed more but chose not to. Why? Because wanton violence could be counterproductive," tarnishing a group's image and provoking massive crackdowns. Al Qaeda, however, represented a new generation of religious terrorists that operate without such constraints: "Those convinced that they have the mandate of God to kill their foes have fewer moral qualms about mass murder and care less about constituents."

The historian Walter Laqueur, also writing in How Did This Happen?, amplifies that observation by noting that the new religious terrorists have come to the fore at the same time that weapons of mass destruction have become much more available. "One must conclude," he argues, "that the world is now entering a new phase it its history, more dangerous than any before." Strong words, perhaps. But in the light of September 11, it now seems like wishful thinking to believe we will escape future acts of catastrophic terrorism.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The essays in How Did This Happen? posit a number of useful suggestions. Richard K. Betts, writing about the role of the U.S. intelligence community, observes that on "many subjects the coverage is now only one analyst deep." To ameliorate this problem, Betts advocates the creation of an "intelligence analyst reserve corps: people ... who can be mobilized if a crisis involving their area erupts." He also urges Washington to rely more heavily on academics for analysis of long-term trends in the Muslim world. Joseph Nye, meanwhile, argues robustly for giving Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security greater budgetary authority, so that Ridge does not end up as a mere figurehead, like the country's drug czar. And The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook decries the failure of the "All-Too-Friendly Skies." The aviation industry, he finds, had previously trained pilots to cooperate with hijackers, a policy that had disastrous results in September. "The new training assumption must be that hijackers are butchers and not 'rational' criminals, and that it is better to let a few passengers die than to let all of them die."

For its part, To Prevail -- a selection of essays produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- focuses less on how September's attacks happened and more on possible solutions to the scourge of terrorism. Antony Blinken, who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 2001, outlines an interesting approach in "Elevating Public Diplomacy." If terrorism is theater, then counterterrorism should be as well -- or at least it should have a much larger propaganda component than it has been given thus far. For example, bin Laden's argument that the United States is the enemy of Islam should be vigorously disputed. There is certainly plenty of counterevidence. Look, for example, at recent U.S. military interventions in Somalia, Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo -- interventions that saved hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives. This evidence should be widely publicized in the Muslim world to help combat the image of America as the Great Satan. As Blinken explains, "during the Cold War, public diplomacy was an effective weapon in the West's arsenal." In the current campaign it should be as well.