Barry Rubin
In the exchange over Ron Paul’s vindication of the September 11 attack in the Republican presidential debate there’s an important point being missed. Paul keeps insisting that Usama bin Ladin attacked America because the United States was occupying Muslim territory, particularly Saudi Arabia, and its treatment of the Palestinians.
This is not true.
But equally, Rick Santorum was wrong when he remarked in response: “We were attacked, as Newt [Gingrich] talked about, because we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists.” It is amazing that ten years after September 11 the truth is still not widely understood. First, Paul misses the number one complaint of bin Ladin at the time, which was the U.S. sanctions on Iraq which bin Ladin claims was killing millions of Iraqis. Those sanctions were UN-approved and a response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to implement measures to check his nuclear and WMD programs in general.
In other words, this was not some American action but an international action in response to Iraqi behavior, and could have been lifted at any moment if Saddam had wanted to do so. Saddam’s dictatorship was also using available money to buy arms and obtain luxuries for his elite so he was doubly responsible for any suffering within Iraq, which was exaggerated by his regime for propaganda purposes.
Ron Paul doesn’t want to seem as if he’s siding with Saddam Hussein but he is.
Second, Paul is dead wrong when he attributes the September 11 attack to al-Qaida’s anger at U.S. policy toward the Palestinians. What is surprising is how infrequently this issue was mentioned before the attacks. Indeed, having done a detailed survey of al-Qaida statements before September 11, I discovered that the Palestinian issue was not mentioned more than such things as the treatment of Muslims in the Balkans and in Southeast Asia.
Moreover, by September 2001, the United States had become the main patron of the Palestinians, provided most of the aid they received (and encouraged other countries to give the rest), and had offered a Palestinian state.
Paul thus merely accepts and promotes Islamist propaganda. In many ways, so does the current occupant of the White House.
But Santorum and Gingrich are obviously wrong also. Why should Islamists attack the World Trade Center because “we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists”? Why should they possibly care?
The missing element here does relate to U.S. action but not anything the United States should be ashamed of. A bit of background is needed. By September 2001, the Islamists had failed. Other than in Afghanistan—where, ironically, they did so in part with U.S. help—the Islamists had not taken over any country other than Iran. The movement was flagging. Insurgencies in Algeria and Egypt were totally defeated.
What bin Ladin and his colleagues concluded—and very explicitly and consistently explained—was that a change in priority was needed. When they tried to overthrow Arab governments they were defeated; when they killed Muslims in terrorist attacks they were unpopular.
Instead, al-Qaida promoted a new strategy: attack the United States as the perceived force preventing an Islamist victory against the existing regimes and kill non-Muslim, Americans in order to appear heroic and to be popular. The mighty United States would be shown to be a pitiful helpless giant, the Muslim masses would decide they were all-powerful, and revolutions would sweep the Middle East.
Two additional points are important here. First, this was an attempt to repeat the victory in Afghanistan—the place where al-Qaida arose—according to bin Ladin’s exception. Afghanistan was conquered by defeating one superpower, the USSR, which subsequently collapsed. Attacking New York and Washington would defeat the other superpower and the United States would collapse.
It was true that U.S. policy was a major element in motivating the attack but not the policy of “occupation” in any real sense but the understanding that America was ultimately the biggest enemy of the jihadists and would never support their coming to power. Well, how would bin Ladin know that Barack Obama would become president?
Yet could American policy have been different? Was the United States going to sponsor al-Qaida and the jihadists? Of course not. Thus, al-Qaida attacked America because of the same factor that made imperial Japan bomb Pearl Harbor, or the USSR view the United States as its main Cold War adversary.
Thus, a Cold War “Ron Paul” would wrongly say that the USSR hated America because it was an imperialist occupier—wrong—and a Cold War Santorum-Gingrich would wrongly say that the USSR hated America because the United States had a democratic system of freedom. Similarly, the Japanese did not attack the United States because it "occupied" the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, nor did they attack it because they didn't like American civilization. They attacked because they knew that America must be discredited and defeated if Tokyo was going to rule the entire Pacific Ocean and most of its shores.
The USSR, 1941 Japan, Islamist Iran, and al-Qaida hated America because they correctly perceived it as a strategic adversary which had to be destroyed in order for them to triumph. And in playing this role, the United States made no mistake and had no choice. These are not moralistic issues—bad America as occupier; good America as land of freedom—but strategic issues. And the next president of the United States better understand strategy, not just self-loathing or applause lines.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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