|
|
Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin
Laden, by Peter L. Bergen. Free Press, 2001, 304 pages.
The Manufacture of
Terror by Gene Healy
Peter L. Bergen is a terrorism expert who's studied Osama
bin Laden for years and interviewed him in 1997. He started writing this book
before the Sept. 11 attacks. He was so confident that the book would be a
bestseller, whether he got it to press quickly or not, that he took the time to
do a comprehensive and accessible account of what he calls the "multinational
holding company" of terror that is al Qaeda.
| | Gene
Healy is a writer in Washington, D.C., and publisher of genehealy.com. |
|
In addition to the fact that "Holy War, Inc." is highly readable, I liked it
for two reasons: it confirmed what I've been telling people about U.S. foreign
policy being a chief motivating factor behind Islamist terror (and it's always
nice to have your prejudices confirmed), and it made me worry a lot less about al
Qaeda's capabilities. Bergen punctures the conceit – so popular among
neoconservatives – that al Qaeda is after us because we're rich, capitalist,
democratic, secular, fun-loving, and free: "In all the tens of thousands
of words that bin Laden has uttered on the public record there are some
significant omissions: he does not rail against the pernicious effects of
Hollywood movies, or against Madonna's midriff, or against the pornography
protected by the U.S. Constitution. Nor does he inveigh against the drug and
alcohol culture of the West, or its tolerance for homosexuals. . . .
"Judging by his silence, bin Laden cares little about such cultural issues. What
he condemns the United States for is simple: its policies in the Middle East.
Those are, to recap briefly: the continued American military presence in Arabia,
U.S. support for Israel, its continued campaign against Iraq, and its support for
regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that bin Laden regards as apostates from
Islam." |
| Bergen punctures the
conceit – so popular among neoconservatives – that al Qaeda is after us
because we're rich, capitalist, democratic, secular, fun-loving, and free.
|
|
Bergen is no peacenik Blame-America Firster – he supports President
Bush's proposed war on Iraq. So when he says that al Qaeda is motivated by
American interventionism, he has no particular political ax to grind. He's just
stating his informed opinion. The "they-hate-us-because-we're-beautiful" crowd
over at National Review should take note. "Holy War, Inc." made me worry
less about al Qaeda's capabilities because it makes clear that their successes
thus far have been largely a product of American complacency and
unpreparedness. Don't get me wrong: al Qaeda's patience and detailed
planning of operations is impressive. But how do you get a speedboat full of
explosives right up next to an American destroyer (the U.S.S. Cole)? How do you
hijack a plane with a boxcutter? You do it by capitalizing on the fact that
everyone that ought to be vigilant is asleep at the switch. This is
nowhere clearer than in Bergen's account of how Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian al Qaeda
operative, became a U.S. Army Special Forces instructor in the late '80s. Like
Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohammed Atta, Ali Mohamed was pretty vocal about his
beliefs. But nobody did much about it: "Four of Mohamed's superior
officers say that he made no secret of his deeply felt Islamist beliefs and even
claimed to have trained militants in Lebanon. But his opinions did not bother his
supervisor. . . . "Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, Mohamed's overall boss, did
find some of his beliefs disturbing. Anderson recalled being particularly struck
by a conversation with Mohamed about the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who had
been assassinated in 1981 for making a peace deal with Israel. 'I told him I
thought that Anwar Sadat was a true patriot for Egypt,' Anderson said. 'With a
very cold stare, he said to me,"'No, he had to go, he was a traitor."' Indeed,
Anderson says, Mohamed told him that he had belonged to the same army unit as
Sadat's assassin."
| Is al Qaeda a paper
tiger? I wouldn't go that far. But I wonder if they're as dangerous as federal
power-grabbers have led us to believe. |
|
Anderson filed two intelligence reports on Mohamed, but – surprise!
– "no one ever followed up." I keep reading about al Qaeda's
sophisticated computer hacking abilities, and their attempts to develop weapons
of mass destruction. But a lot of these folks don't sound all that bright. Take
Mohamed Odeh, an al Qaeda operative who helped with the 1998 bombing of the U.S.
embassy in Tanzania. Upon his arrival in Karachi's airport shortly after the
bombing, Pakistani immigration officials took Odeh aside because his passport
showed a man with a beard, but he had subsequently shaved his off so as to appear
less religious. They asked Odeh, "are you a terrorist?" Instead of denying it, he
stayed silent. When they pressed him about the bombing, he tried to persuade the
immigration officials that it was "the right thing to do for Islam." I
know that al Qaeda's supposed to be working on an "Islamic bomb" to terrorize
D.C. or New York (in fact, Bergen notes that al Qaeda's interest in weapons of
mass destruction was sparked by repeated U.S. government warnings that such
weapons could easily be produced by terrorist groups) but with brainpower like
this at their disposal, let's just say I'm not going to put my house in D.C. up
for sale anytime soon. Is al Qaeda a paper tiger? I wouldn't go that far.
But I wonder if they're as dangerous as federal power-grabbers have led us to
believe. We've gone ten months without a major terror attack. And I'm sorry, but
I find it hard to believe that that's because the FBI is on top of things.
|
| | |
|
