Root causes of anti-US Islamic terrorism

Yoram Ettinger

There has recently been a rise in Muslim-American terrorism in the U.S. On Jan. 9, a U.S.-naturalized Kosovar Muslim terrorist was arrested in Florida while plotting to bomb nightclubs in Tampa, a hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood activities and organizations. In December, the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 30 Tampa-based used-car dealers involved in a Hezbollah drug money-laundering ring. Tampa is the home base of the U.S. Central Command, located at the nearby MacDill Air Force Base. In November, an American al-Qaida sympathizer was arrested in New York for conspiring to bomb police stations and post offices. This wave of terrorism follows the June 2010 arrest of eight Muslim terrorists in North Carolina, the May, 2010 foiled Times Square car bombing, and the November 2009 massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, as well as other examples. t has been suggested that U.S. policies toward Muslim nations has fueled this Islamic rage and terrorism. However, the surge in anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism, and the proliferation of Islamic terrorist sleeper cells and training camps in the U.S. and Canada, have occurred in spite of the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia, which yielded independence for the Muslim-dominated Bosnia and Kosovo, and despite the billion-dollar U.S. assistance to the mujahadeen, which empowered them to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1989. Moreover, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who opposed the war in Iraq and supported Palestinian demands, was greeted by three Muslim terrorist-engineered car bombs in London and Glasgow when he was inaugurated in June 2007.

Notwithstanding the generous U.S. foreign aid to Arab countries and to the Palestinian Authority, and irrespective of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran, which facilitated Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power, the U.S. is increasingly referred to as “the enemy of Allah” and “a modern-day Crusader.” According to Professor Bernard Lewis, considered to be the world's greatest scholar of the Muslim world, Islam stipulates that “the duty of God's soldiers is to dispatch God's enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them -- that is to say, the afterlife.”

The most-frequently mentioned (supposed) cause of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism is U.S. support of Israel and U.S. policy toward the Palestinians. Nevertheless, 9/11 was planned while former U.S. President Bill Clinton and then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians the entire store. The Oct. 12, 2000 murder of 17 sailors on the USS Cole happened when Israel and the U.S. offered unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David. The Aug. 27, 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (257 murdered and more than 4,000 injured) took place while Clinton was brutally pressuring then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The murders of 19 U.S. soldiers in Riyadh and the Khobar Towers, in 1995 and 1996, were carried out while then-interim Prime Minister Shimon Peres implemented unprecedented concessions for the Palestinians. The February 1993 World Trade Center bombing (six murdered and more than 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted the pre-Oslo talks with the PLO. The Dec. 21, 1988 Pan Am-103 terrorist attack (270 murdered) took place a few months following the groundbreaking recognition of the PLO by the U.S. The 1983 murder of 300 Marines and 58 French soldiers in car bombings at the U.S. Embassy and Marines base, and at the French military headquarters in Beirut, all occurred while the U.S. military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the U.S. administration blasted Israel for its war against the PLO.

All things considered, terrorists bite the hands that feed them.

Irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian issue, the U.S.-Israel friendship, and Israel's policies or existence, Islamic terrorism has afflicted the Middle East and the entire globe, including North, Central and South America, for 14 centuries, long before the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Islamic rogue regimes view the U.S. as their key moral and strategic adversary. U.S.-style freedom of religion, expression, markets and association constitute a lethal threat to all Islamic regimes. Their territorial imperialism has suffered a severe setback by the U.S.'s military, economic and diplomatic dominance. They abhor the dominance of “the infidel” over the “true believer,” which they consider morally blasphemous and strategically wrong. They are determined to push the U.S. out of the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and Africa in order to advance their megalomaniac aspirations. Humiliating a superpower, preferably on its own soil, would be critical to the resurrection of Islamic grandeur. Therefore, no U.S. pressure on Israel would spare Washington the wrath of rogue Islamic regimes; it could, however, transform Israel from a strategic asset to a strategic liability.

While most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims, supported by several Muslim states. Other than Turkey, all Islamic regimes achieved, and maintained, power through violence. They believe in total submission to God and to those who rule, supposedly, by divine prescription. They terrorize those whom they cannot integrate domestically and externally.

The insistence on engaging and not on confronting rogue regimes; denying the existence of global Islamic terrorism; contending that jihad is a process which purifies the soul; and assuming that Islamic terrorists represent a Muslim minority, undermines moral clarity, and therefore impairs operational clarity. It provides a headwind to Western democracies and a tailwind to terrorists.