58 Comments

1. Nick G:

I agree with your analysis, but for the hell of it I’ll play devil’s advocate. And I’ll try not to make this a case of semantics, because I think it’s deeper than that.

Like you said, much of this pseudo-academic talk about “root causes” is baloney, in part because no matter what “root” you look at, there is an equal and opposite implication. Academic explanations for terrorism want to make terrorism about everything but itself.

In this case, Bush mentioned “hopelessness.” There is also the standard lip-biting about “poverty” and “education,” and as mentioned, most of the terrorist leaders are of enormous wealth. Plus, the one commonality a lot of these jihadi guys have is they were all educated in top-notch Western schools.

But here’s my proposition: is it possible to a) accept that the cause of terrorism is NOT hopelessness, poverty, and poor education, and b) still believing defeating terrorism will require more than merely addressing these issues, all the while c) acknowledging that addressing these issues can only help?

For example: Clearly, radical madrassas (education) remain a problem in indoctrinating and creating the next generation of terrorists, even though many of these students will end up at Harvard anyway before their terrorist careers begin. That the Saudis have an equal hand in those radical madrassas as well as the faculties of Western academia I think underscores this point.

So in Bush’s defense, you could make the case that by “hopelessness” he meant “lack of democracy” (he’s never been one to articulate himself very well). But that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt, because even if this is what Bush meant, then the obvious corollary question is: does Bush believe terrorism exists ONLY because of a lack of democracy? Why aren’t we seeing similar terrorist movements in Burma, then? It’s the same counterarguments used for those who speak of poverty as the root cause: why aren’t Haitians blowing up skyscrapers, etc.?

If by mid-century the Middle East embraces, even a little bit more, liberal democracy, human rights, secular education, free-market principals, cultural diversity, modernity, globalization etc. etc., then I am sure people in the region would be more “hopeful,” and there would be fewer potential recruits to join al Qaida-like groups. But, like you said, Bush is mistaken if he believes the jihadists themselves are hopeless, poor, and downtrodden. So while some people might JOIN these groups because they have a nothing-left-to-lose mentality, once they’re in them, the great divine cause fills their lives with deadly purpose, and they are no longer hopeless.

Dec 23, 2008 - 2:04 am 2. Nick G:

Staying on your topic, there’s a new book out: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123000033860729321.html

“Paul Marshall would not be surprised by such stunningly naïve statements. In “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion” — a collection of essays that he edited with Lela Gilbert and Roberta Green Ahmanson — he notes that similar assertions have been common in the coverage of Islamic terrorism. The book’s contributors explore all sorts of news stories with a religious component — Islamic and otherwise — showing where reporters have veered off course and discussing the reasons why.”

Seems worth picking up.

Dec 23, 2008 - 3:39 am 3. Drellberg:

The President includes one sentence (a half-sentence, really) of off-the-cuff pablum and Dr. Ledeen is prepared to write him off. I see the point, but really, does anyone else come under this sort of scrutiny? I see a President who has expended every last nickel of political capital at his disposal in pursuit of this war. He is leaving office with some of his goals unmet, but c’mon … Would even Dr. Ledeen deny that in the big picture, given all of the opposition he has faced, that we are winding down this administration in far better shape than anyone would have reason to expect? I truly wish that someone of Dr. Ledeen’s stature and objectivity would write the definitive article evaluating this President’s 8-year performance, because I just can not fathom how the guy warrants anything but our unqualified thanks.

Dec 23, 2008 - 4:29 am 4. Uzi:

Truth is that Jihadist terrorism does indeed feed off of hopelessness and poverty, just not off of the hopelessness and poverty of the individual terrorist.

Rather it feeds off of the pitiful state of the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. Their backwardness, their retarded economic and technological development, their substandard medical care, their high rates of illiteracy, their obvious inferiority when compared on objective standards of achievement with Christian, Buddhist, Confucianist, Hindu and Jewish societies, these are a source of endless humiliation to people in Muslim societies with their honour/shame culture.

And to many proud young Arab or Muslim men and boys(and in a few cases– women and girls), the remedy for that shame and humiliation is revenge, violent murderous revenge, through terrorism. If they can’t make their own Muslim societies prosper at the level of the Zionist Jews or Crusader Americans or polytheist Indians, they can at least try to smash up those places and bring them down to their level.

But attempting to turn some of the Muslim societies into some kind of a success, into something better, that will not cause shame and humilition to the local Muslims (eg.- Iraq if it survives as a fledgling democracy) may cause fewer people to sign up for Jihad.

Dec 23, 2008 - 7:11 am 5. ~Paules:

Mr. Bush’s statement reveals the prejudices of an occidental mind. Anyone familiar with the use of the word Inshallah (if God wills it) knows the attitude of poor Muslims to their lot in life. Most Arab Muslims I met while traveling the region were more inclined toward fatalism and complacency than to violence.

Hatred and violence in the Muslim world are carefully cultivated by both secular and religious authorities for reasons of power and prestige. It’s an easy game to play where shame and humiliation are so deeply entrenched in the male psyche. Yasser Arafat was a master of these despicable tactics. He profited mightily even as Gaza and the West Bank descended into criminality and poverty.

The cure for Islamic extremism will be a gradual secularization of the culture brought on by modernity. You can take the one million Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship as the model. They are loyal to the Israeli state because they understand that modernity brings with it material abundance and personal liberty. It would seem that Iraqis, too, are learning the lesson.

President Bush would do better to steer clear of the “root cause” explanation from the left for two reasons. The theory is entirely materialistic and fails to take into account the cultural aspects of the problem. And Mr. Bush won’t get any credit from his opponents anyway for mouthing their erroneous ideas. We must recognize that the West is in a culture war with the more recalcitrant forms of a reactionary Islam.

In time, secularism will solve the problems of terrorism as Muslims reject extremism in favor of modernity. Of course, the accomodation of Sharia as in Europe right now is precisely the wrong strategy. The West must insist on the rule of law, and one law for all based on our secular traditions. The answer for those pockets of Islam that produce the violence is to eradicate them with the sword. It’s going to be a war of generational length, but that’s as it must be. I can only hope that Mr. Obama is more pragmatic than ideological. Yeah, hope. That word again.

Dec 23, 2008 - 10:06 am 6. Nick G:

Paules, while I agree with most of what you said, I think the point Dr Ledeen was making, and one I understand, is that while modernity, education, etc. are necessary, they might not be sufficient — insofar as the social sciences of the Middle East won’t solve the problem.

Take the U.S. for example: we are the most tolerant and inclusive society on the planet, and yet we still groups have people who make free choices to exclude themselves, and disconnect themselves, from society. Think of the Amish.

Now, obviously the Amish are a lot more benign than al Qaida, so don’t think I’m comparing the two. But the point remains: we can give “hope” — democracy, modernity, good education, a healthy economy — to every state in the Middle East, and that won’t necessarily guarantee that we have eradicated all jihadist movements whatsoever. Jihadists are reactionary; they’ll migrate and entrench themselves somewhere, some failed states and disconnected part of the world — just as Lenin failed in Germany and “went back in time” to the more disconnected Russia. My guess would be parts of Africa.

It reminds me of the debate we’d have in class all the time. Professors would say “only if we opened up our economy with Iran,” as if to imply a good economy = the immediate change of behavior from the mullahs.

Which isn’t so. It’s entirely possible for these jihadists to be successful militarily, economically, technologically, and still hold their warped 7th century vision of the world. THAT is what gives THEM “hope” — ascertaining more abilities to kill us — and I think that’s the point that was made about Bush’s comment.

Dec 23, 2008 - 11:54 am 7. Winston:

There’s no hope in hell to win this battle against Islamism, IMO. I just hope that the US military killed enough of the Jihadists.

Dec 23, 2008 - 1:13 pm 8. Sohrab:

I disagree: the situation is not hopeless. Radical Islamism as practiced by non-state actors like al-Qaeda is ultimately self-defeating. It is and will continue to be a challenge for the West, but it won’t last simply because it’s highly improbable that suicide bombing after suicide bombing will usher the dreamed-of Caliphate. If anything, their savage attacks will draw and redraw more and more nations into the GWOT fold. Meanwhile, the Arab street will eventually transition successfully to globalization — parts of it have already but we need to hasten the process.

Radical Islam as practiced by state actors like Iran however, is far more dangerous. If the Iran is obtains nuclear weapons, then the international community will have to contend with the IRI as a permanent entity. Regime change will be off the table. That’s why it’s important for the West to link its security concerns vis-a-vis the IRI to the struggle of the masses of Iranian people for democracy and human rights.

Thanks for a great discussion and happy holidays,

Sohrab
http://www.iranianfreedom.wordpress.com

Dec 23, 2008 - 3:09 pm 9. KBK:

He didn’t say the terrorists were hopeless, he said they feed off hopelessness. And I think they do. It’s also true that the terrorists are quite hopeful their cause will triumph, but that’s not Bush’s point.

Dec 23, 2008 - 5:05 pm 10. David Thomson:

“…he said they feed off hopelessness. And I think they do.”

The radical Islamists do not primarily feed off the hopelessness of needing to satisfy one’s material needs. No, we are instead talking about the poverty of the spirit. The Muslim world must have it counter-reformation, but it is existentially discombobulating. This is why the reactionaries nihilistically prefer death over living in a secular world that cannot be reconciled to the backward beliefs of the 8th Century. There is not enough room on the planet for both value systems. That is why we are engaged in a life and death struggle. Only one world view will ultimately prevail. Compromise is not even remotely possible.

George W. Bush was damaged by his years as a Harvard University student. He’s far too concerned about being a member of the “elites.” The current president would have likely been better off studying at Eureka College—like Ronald Reagan.

Dec 24, 2008 - 12:29 am 11. Pajamas Media » President Bush Doesn’t Understand Terrorism. At All.:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Dec 24, 2008 - 1:20 am 12. Patterson:

Very good analysis. However, I wouldn’t judge Bush so harshly. I think he has a pretty good idea of what terrorists are capable of and where they come from. I’ll admit, I was ready to come in here guns blazing when I read your title but you did a good job at explaining your view. Nicely done!

Dec 24, 2008 - 2:08 am 13. marvin:

It’s both you doughnut. Some are inspired revolutionaries, others are just hopeless misfits. In the UK it’s both.

Dec 24, 2008 - 2:47 am 14. Nick G:

I was watching a film recently, and the mosque leader asked his congregation something like this: “When you die and face Almighty God, and he asks why you did not fight in his name, what will be your answer? When he asks why you did not use the one weapon he gave you — your body — to kill unbelievers, what will be your answer? Will you hold your head proud and walk into the kindgom of heaven, or will you bow your head in shame and face the fires of hell?”

That is how people make the final decision. Yes, you have to be an idiot to believe this stuff. But that doesn’t be eradicating idiocy will solve the problem.

In the end, the best way to defeat terrorism, to put it blunty, is to kill them. And have the people around them kill them. Look at Anbar. Nobody expects these Anbari tribesmen to split the atom anytime soon, or be overwhelmed with values derived from the Enlightenment. All we ask is that they reject terror, and resist it with all their might.

We should avoid the tendency to make things overly abstract. It’s pretty concrete: the more we punish our adversaries and pound them into submission, the more they come across as futile. They’ll be seen not only as cruel, but as weak. And in the Middle East, that’s suicide (pun entirely intended).

Dec 24, 2008 - 3:03 am 15. DavidN:

Frankly, I for once think Mr. Ledeen completely misses President Bush’s point, and also misinterprets the situation in the world of the radical terrorist. The Arab world (which, amorphously, contains some ethnic groups other than Arabs, mostly co-religionists who are from other Muslim countries) has been horribly humiliated by the way the West has been able to push them around for centuries now. One great observation of Bernard Lewis’ is that when the Muslim world fell behind the Christian West, rather than asking what happened or why, they instead asked “Who did this to us?” They of course have answers (the typical ones, now, are the Jews and surrogates in the U.S. and elsewhere), and they are very open to conspiracy theories.

It’s important to understand that religion in this instance has been overemphasized. I believe this is because the Arab terrorists involved wanted to justify their actions by wrapping them in a religious cloak, and our national news media, and psyche overall, are inclined to blame religion for anything bad that happens, regardless. In reality, our difficulties in the Middle East have much more to do with culture, and the Middle Eastern form of “face” or “machismo” with which we’re so familiar here in the West. *Every* Arab, with only a few exceptions, was (I would guess) at least a little bit humiliated at how easily we defeated Sadaam’s army, twice. I’m talking dissidents here, people who haven’t been in the country for 20 years because Sadaam would have killed them. This same effect has been seen throughout history: the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution, was so young he could have served as one of Napoleon’s Marshals. The Emperor tried to hire him, but the Marquis refused…though he did enjoy reading about the French Army’s victories on the battlefield. Any number of Germans who despised Hitler fought for Germany anyway during the war, in part because their patriotism outweighed any revulsion they had for Der Fuhrer.

My point is this: Until the Arab world grows up to the point that young men have something else to do other than sit around, fiddle on computers, and discuss with each other why they’re so bereft of any opportunities, they’ll continue to become terrorists. Look at the countries that spawned most of the 9/11 hijackers. Famously, because “they’re supposed to be our Ally”, Saudi Arabia tops the list. Young men there have no opportunity for work, have to leave the country to get a good education (and have to be related to someone wealthy in order to afford this), and don’t even have the opportunity to meet young women. I think this latter is under-rated as a reason why this has happened. Give a 20-year-old guy a shot at a girl, and the last thing he’s thinking is suicide, at least until he screws it up and she leaves the party with someone else. With no jobs, education, or women, it’s no wonder they become terrorists. Truly poverty-stricken countries, in Africa for instance, have some problems, but nothing on this scale. Instead you get thieves in Somalia who take the boats and get called pirates.

Dec 24, 2008 - 5:44 am 16. formwiz:

To restate the old bromide, There’s no such thing as a poor terrorist – Carlos The Jackal, Zawahiri, Baader, etc. David Thomson is correct in noting that these people are on a mission from God – witness Bin Laden, Qutb, et al. It has less to do with despair than looking for people who want to strike a blow for their idea of right.

As for Winston, of all people, you should know better than to say this war is unwinnable. Your forebears faced a similar problem and solved it. Remember the Sepoy Mutiny?

Dec 24, 2008 - 5:48 am 17. Perry:

Political correctness forbids Bush from telling the truth (isn’t that the essence of political correctness?).

The root cause of terrorism not poverty. It is Islam and the Koran, a set of rules for faith, living, government, society, commerce, death, and beyond. The Koran commands ALL believers (Muslims) to jihad, the struggle to make Islam dominant worldwide through whatever means necessary. That means deception (Takiyya), the submission of Infidels (Dhimmis) and making them pay a tax (Jizya) as inferior beings, and the death of those infidels if they will not submit.

Yes Michael, jihadis are positively inspired and driven on a cause, a religious duty to claim the entire world as “Dar al-Islam”. Jihadi terrorism has NOTHING to do with poverty. It is the mission of Islam to force the non-Muslim world (Dar al-Harb – the world of war) to submit.

I have used the word submit many times in this post. That is by design. I will use it one last time:

The English translation of the Arabic word Islam is…

…submission.

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:37 am 18. BC:

This is easily the best article I’ve seen about the jihad mindset, in this case of someone you might regard even regard as an idealist of sorts:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/19763776/the_insurgents_tale

People have to remember that terrorists don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Hmmm…. now how many innocents can I blow up today in the name of God….hmmm….maybe after some coffee”.

An absolute must-see for anyone with strong opinions about terrorism is a 1966 black and white film called “The Battle of Algiers”. It looks like a documentary, but it isn’t. It does, though, very clearly demonstrates how terrorism can originate and under what circumstances, as well as the origin of the “terrorist cell” (it’s been rumored and claimed that the film has actually become a terrorist “How to” over the years.)

The bottom line is that nothing is unsolvable, but you really first need to know who and what you’re dealing with, which Bush and his people had no friggin idea about. Reportedly bin Laden any many other fundamentalist Muslims had been very upset with the US presence in Saudi Arabia near sacred ground, which was a result of the first Gulf War, and that this was a symbol of subservience. This was supposedly the main motivation for the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden got his wish in the spring in 2003 when the US pulled out and and moved its air command center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.

Knowledge is power, Ho Ho Ho….

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:40 am 19. Blaine:

ending your life is the ultimate act of hopelessness, you may look forward to rewards in the after life but by definition you have given up hope for this life.

Dec 24, 2008 - 7:02 am 20. DJ:

@BC:

The bottom line is that nothing is unsolvable, but you really first need to know who and what you’re dealing with, which Bush and his people had no friggin idea about. Reportedly bin Laden any many other fundamentalist Muslims had been very upset with the US presence in Saudi Arabia near sacred ground, which was a result of the first Gulf War, and that this was a symbol of subservience. This was supposedly the main motivation for the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden got his wish in the spring in 2003 when the US pulled out and and moved its air command center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.

If you think “Bush and his people” had no idea about this, you’re the one who doesn’t have a clue. You probably think that if the US pulled out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, then Islamist terrorism would subside — after all, they’d have gotten what they wanted, right?

You have no idea about the scope of their aims, even though they are quite explicit about them.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:07 am 21. Roger L. Simon » What do you do about Gaza?:

[...] Traditional types explain this by writing of the “hopelessness” of Gaza – but as Michael opines this morning, they may have it wrong.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:09 am 22. Karin:

This is by far the most informed group of commenters I’ve seen. I’ve studied this topic quite a bit, and obviously so have you. Excllent points, all. And nobody is more right than Perry, who says that Bush isn’t saying what he really thinks, because of PC.

But what to do about it? Faithfreedom.org believes the solution is for Muslims to leave Islam. The far hard left wants Jews to leave Israel. The far hard right wants Muslims to just leave.

I personally feel humiliation in the face of an honor/shame culture is a huge cause. But what can you do about that, when they believe the most perfect example of manhood is Mohammed and his way of life? The rest of the world has moved beyond caves and tents and using stones for toilet paper.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:11 am 23. Larsen E Whipsnade:

15. DavidN: “Until the Arab world grows up to the point that young men have something else to do other than sit around, fiddle on computers, and discuss with each other why they’re so bereft of any opportunities, they’ll continue to become terrorists.”

I think we have to focus our minds a little more sharply on this matter. Your young Arab menm are Muslims, & Muslims do what they do. What really needs to happen (to paraphrase Ann Coulter) is that we need to invade their countries, kill their leaders, and force the rest to convert to Christianity. In other words, nothing will change until they change their minds. Change will never happen within Islam.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:18 am 24. Richard Jansen:

As Uzi correctly said the Islamic jihadists feed off the hopelessness in the Arab world. It is also true that the jihadists themselves, far from hopelessness, are full of hope. It also true that the true root of the global jihad is found in the Koran. I might point out in passing that the wealthy patrician from upstate New York,FDR, exploited hopelessness in our country in 1932. What else is new.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:22 am 25. Mike:

I think (maybe hope) that you are making too much of this. Bush’s thoughts are scattered and what comes out of his mouth is even more so. He may fleetingly believe and say what you quoted and discected above, but I think in his more coherent, lucid moments he understands and knows the true root causes of this evil.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:26 am 26. Richard A Fay:

I agree with much of what you say, but I think you’ve misinterpreted Bush’s comment. He doesn’t say that terrorists feel hopeless ; he says that they can exploit the hopelessness of others (”others” is implied since you can’t exactly explot yourself). I think Uzi has it about right.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:32 am 27. cedarford:

Because this means he doesn’t understand terrorism. At all. Terrorists aren’t recruited because they feel hopeless. Quite the contrary; they feel inspired, galvanized, heroic and saintly. They are revolutionaries, they are seeking to change the world, and their actions are not one last desperate throw of the dice. Theirs are acts of hope and optimism, certainly not of despair. They think they’re part of a victorious army, not isolated individuals crushed by misery.

Ledeen is right. Witness how many nations have been headed by former terrorists, even a considerable cluster now lauded, even revered by Americans.

Like so many other things in his failed Presidency, Bush never grasped the core truths about Islam and terrorism – that he needed to grasp to lead effectively. “The Religion of Peace”, “War on Terror (tactics), “Noble Purple-Fingered democracy-hungry Freedom Lovers”…

Fortunately, Bush is now history.

His remaining backers can say “Well, he kept us safe”….but that infers nothing else in American life impacts each citizen’s concerns about their and their family’s security but the distant prospect of being killed by an “Evildoer”.
Would that he had only spent a little less time on his self-absorbed all-consuming WOT, and a little more on safeguarding American’s jobs, economic future, their declining access to affordable healthcare. Insisting that his appointees work to make Federal agencies competent, that his fellow Republicans refrain from reckless spending.

Dec 24, 2008 - 9:40 am 28. ~Paules:

Nick G:

You mention the Amish as a sect capable of resisting the forces of modernity. True enough as far as it goes, but the Islamic world has already changed to accomodate modernity. The bedouin culture of Arabia has been displaced by urbanization. Whereas the Amish shun city life, the Arabs have embraced the comforts of urbanization with all its attendant vices. The average Saudi lives in a dual world where the public face of piety serves to conceal an appetite for western consumerism including our culture.

The Amish have deliberately adopted a self-sufficient, agrarian lifestyle as a means to fend off modernity. The average Arab, whether living in Jeddah, London, or Detroit, is forced to rub shoulders with contemporary culture on a daily basis. Such familiarity is extremely seductive to Arab youth. The generational clash between tradition and modernity is a cause for pathological behavior. We see it in honor killings when young Arab women stray from the accepted norms of their culture. Rather than accomodate the patriarchal tendancies of Islam, western nations should insist on female emancipation both at home and abroad.

Modernity will eventually produce a secularized Islam not unlike secular Christianity and Judaism. Turkey is a good example. I never saw anyone prostrate himself for prayer on a street in Ankara or Istanbul. The norm is to visit the mosque once a week for prayer.

Enclaves of Islamic extremism do exist in our urban centers particularly in Europe. Such places must be infiltrated by the police and dealt with appropriately as threats to national security. That would leave Islamic radicals only the hinterlands of failed states as a base for operations. The position puts the terrorists at a strategic disadvantage. The U.S. military has tremendous reach, but terrorists are likely to find it logistically impossible to strike New York from bases in Waziristan or Somolia.

Mr. Ledeen’s blog serves a valuable purpose. The insight and erudition expressed by the commentariat is impressive, and probably more accurate and honest than the opinions of those who base their policy in politics. It might take two or three generations for the process of globalization to defeat Islamic terrorism and finally bring modernity to the far corners of the world. Until Waziristan can be trasformed into a Kurdistan, we need to keep the pressure on the terrorists. That much at least to me seems to be a viable long-term plan.

Dec 24, 2008 - 10:21 am 29. The Historian:

OBAMA & THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OWN THE AFGHAN WAR: They can’t have it both ways. This one was with their support and is now on their watch:

http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/

Dec 24, 2008 - 10:45 am 30. ptsargent:

cedarford, ….it would be helpful if instead of postulating abstract “core truths” as you put it, you might connect these truths to your main point (do you have one?). I agree Bush was influenced much too much by political correctness while leading us into the WOT. And he and mostly his party in control of Congress did blow opportunities regarding the US economy et al especially while they had control of all elements of the government. But, you fail to even mention the role played in all of this by the so-called MSM which betrayed the US public over and over in its coverage of the Iraqi war and the cover it provided for the dems who voted for war based of the same flawed intel Bush used. By poisoning the debate with outright distortions and lies, MSM played a major role in prolonging and making the war effort infinitely more difficult than it should have been. Still, you make some points with which I agree, but definitely not the point Bush’s presidency was a failed one. It was a necessary one in helping define the struggle we are in and the challenges we will face from these fanatics in the future. In case you haven’t noticed, (and why would you since there is nothing but silence on the subject in the so-called MSM), the Iraq phase of this struggle has been won, outright won by Bush’s determination. We have made progress, give the man credit. It is due.

Dec 24, 2008 - 11:28 am 31. G Alston:

I think Ledeen and many of the commentators here assume Bush to be talking about hopelessness vis a vis the state of mind of those who perpetrate terrorism. Ummm… no.

Ledeen seems to be taking Bush out of context. Terrorists were indeed attempting to engender a feeling of hopelessness when wiping out 60+ at a pop in Bahgdad marketplaces. They were attempting to make fighting back lost cause, or at least too expensive to wage. In context the only answer that has worked is superior force (e.g. the surge.) Without superior force to back you up — enough to wipe out the enemy — fighting any terrorism is a lost cause. QED.

Dec 24, 2008 - 12:16 pm 32. Joe Bison:

Sounds like Johnson trying to export the
Great Society to Vietnam. We saw how that
turned out. All that the common man wants
is a future for his kids, a full belly,
a roof over his head etc etc.

Problem is that this view is pervasive at
the present time. At least back then some
people knew it was BS and said so.

Also now you don’t have a containment policy.

Dec 24, 2008 - 12:16 pm 33. iconoclast:

IMHO, the “hopelessness” exploited by the extremists of all stripes is simply a desire to blame someone else for a sick culture. Moving from a fundamental religious approach that does not work–Islam and Socialism are two that come to mind–to a more tolerant and liberal (classical liberalism, please note) is painful. It is much easier to feed off of xenophobia and blame someone else.

Nick is right–once radicalized there is little to do besides kill them. No appeasement is possible because their goal is to absorb everyone. The lust for power is absolute and anyone standing outside of that power is a threat.

What does disappoint me about Bush’s statements is his use of the word “freedom” in sense of freedom from disease. I am sorry, but freedom means freedom to take part in the behavior that encourages disease. Not in a planet-wide diaper that protects the indifferent from diseases that even some minimal protection could minimize. AIDS comes to mind here of course. This is the same as Bambi’s notion of “positive freedom” vs “negative freedom”. Typical lefty pap, but it is depressing to hear Bush mouth those platitudes.

Dec 24, 2008 - 12:21 pm 34. joy:

I have to disagree with you on President Bush. The Media and a large part of the Blogger’s have trashed this President to no end. I, being from Tennessee and knowing the history of Daddy’s little boy Al Gore, I thank God everyday that George Bush was elected President. My take on George Bush is totally different than yours. In the coming administration and the complete destruction of America by Obama, you will pray that the likes of George Bush will reappear. Get off his back for few more weeks and you can have the garbage in the White House Yours Truly, Joy Brown

Dec 24, 2008 - 2:11 pm 35. therealist:

We need to give all of our money to UN-managed global anti-poverty programs so the terrorists will develop self-esteem and not blow us up anymore. And if you disagree with me you’re an uneducated racist.

BTW I went to the museum of natural history today and saw their exhibits that showed caveman in stone age villages sitting around campfires. I really can’t believe that our primitive ancestors were so careless with their carbon footprint.

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:09 pm 36. Elizabeth:

Jihadis will expoloit anything and everything they can for allah’s cause. Perry (#17) is right. They are good muslims who follow the koran and the perfect example of their prophet.

The media, the left and ‘intellectuals’ in their arrogant egoism can’t believe that islam is a religion, a culture and a political system that muslims will willingly die for. They don’t understand that the jihadis have a tribal consciousness that is frozen in time and, according to its precepts, can never be changed. They don’t think like westerners do and don’t follow our ethical system or want to. Democracy for them is only a means to implement their sharia laws.

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:12 pm 37. fred:

None of our policy or academic elites accept the religious and theological roots of jihad violence. I think we can have a better start on this topic if we choose our description with a bit more precision. Jihad violence.

“Terrorism” is a word that betokens a more modern, secularist meaning – typically connected with revolution and Marxism. The poly sci and social science talking heads and academics have stock templates that they use to filter the reality into preconceived meanings and goals.

Even though jihad violence amounts to terrorism, it is much, much more than terrorism, because jihad violence has a telos – a goal. But our elites don’t truly know what that is because they don’t read the Qur’an, ahadith, or the Sira. And they STUBBORNLY refuse to go to the Islamic sources. You see, they already think they know what it’s all about. They don’t need to learn anything else in the world because by virtue of where they went to school and the positions they’ve held in life they feel they are fully equipped to name this beast. But that intellectual sloth and pride is their downfall and our disaster.

The secularist academic and policy elite has received an education that is a hybrid of 20th century post-modernism and sly, subtle Marxist categories for reality. Thus, a purely religious motivation for jihad violence is incomprehensible to that kind of mind. I am not suggesting that Pres. Bush is under the influence of these things. But it is clear he has not done a lot of reading about the sources I named above. I doubt Pres. Bush, or any of the policy elites, are guests at Robert Spencer’s site, JihadWatch.org. Certainly never read any of Robert’s books or any by these authors: Ali Sina, Serge Trifkovic, Andrew Bostom, Ibn Warraq, Andrew Bostom, or Bat Ye’or. The people advising him certainly have not. One of the most sought after “consultants” for the U.S. government is a Saudi paid academic whore at Georgetown University, Prof. John Esposito – himself a disciple of Edward Said, academic supporter of Palestinian terrorism and jihad violence.

These terrorists are not the Red Brigades, The Weather Underground, the Bader-Meinhoff Gang, and other Communist groups. It isn’t about class struggle, poverty, or social justice. Jihad violence was set in motion by a man with a sock puppet, and his name was Muhammad. Before he died in 632 A.D. he set loose upon the world a vortex of Satan’s plagues that reverberate to this day.

The mujahadeen fighting in the way of Allah. “Slay the unbelievers, wherever you may find them.”

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:40 pm 38. WhyamInotsurprised?:

Another example of Bush Derangement Syndrome! If you libs would read one of your own writers discussion of things like the Arab Street, Thomas Freidman, you would understand that Bush has a much deeper understanding of what drives terrorism. Terrorism cannot succeed without support from the local populations where terror is perpetuated. Whether in the middle east or Great Britain, or anywhere else, people who have lost hope have nothing to lose. That is how the rich, well-educated leaders of terrorism fill their ranks. My hope for the middle east is that one day, people like the Palestinians would wake up and say “I want a better future for my children.” Then maybe they would go somewhere and “get a life.” Make a life, somewhere in the desert of which there is plenty belonging to their Arab brethren. Why keep fighting over one small piece of land. Just like the Puritans who left Europe for America, they left to forge a new life instead of continuing to suffer in their own stew about being displaced, put upon by the powers that be, etc.

So go ahead, take your last shots at Bush while he is still President. But I for one believe the war was necessary and that while mistakes were made, there has been relatively successful given this is not a “conventional” war. We have planted a seed of democracy, we have tried to keep the slugs off the new shoots and now will be leaving it to the new Iraqi government to water and care for the new life. It will take at least a couple of generations of tender loving care for democracy to grow to maturity so I hope they will be patient. Bush said when this whole thing started (in response to 9/11), that this effort would be long and hard. Credit him for being true to his beliefs since he did not do the politically expediant thing and bail on his word.

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:49 pm 39. fred:

The idea that modernization, secularization, socialism, capitalism/globalism, and any other name for certain currents within our civilization will overcome Islam and transform it is breathtakingly naive. They truly do not understand Islam and its history. The hauteur of the post modernists is stunning. They believe that because they defeated Christianity and Judaism that they can also seduce Islam with their materialist blandishments. This is the Devil’s bargain, and no good can come from it.

Dec 24, 2008 - 7:04 pm 40. vivo:

Who cares what Bush and his Dirty Dozen think? They wrecked the Country, and their legacy is like a pork farm run by non-farmers. Only right-wingers will eat all that.

Dec 24, 2008 - 7:26 pm 41. Uzi:

40 comments? That’s the first time I’ve ever seen so much commentary on Dr. Ledeen’s website.

Is a website paradigm shift in progress?

Dec 24, 2008 - 11:24 pm 42. tanarg:

I am fairly sure Bush meant the *appeal* to new recruits only. Surely he has said enough in the past to convince us that he understands that the “policy makers” have an ideological agenda. I wouldn’t therefore think anything like what you are thinking, Mr. Ledeen.

Dec 25, 2008 - 2:19 pm 43. Jassem Othman - From the Middle East (Poland):

It doesn’t surprise that “Arabs and Moslems are practicing violence and terrible atrocities”, in spite of the fact the vast majority of them do NOT know why? Surely the vast majority of them do NOT know what the democracy and freedom mean!!!
The major cause “Most Koran verses encourage and command to violence” By this terrible way they believe that they have guaranteed way to paradise. The Muslims deeply believe that NON-Moslem, they will be “Jews” and every Jew is an infidel according to most of Koran verses, doesn’t matter whether if you are “French, American, German, Australian, Swedish…etc.”
Poverty is NOT the main cause of terrorism. Actually the main reasons are “EDUCATION AND EVIL IDEOLOGY”. Almost all Sep, 11, 2001 suicide bombers came from affluent backgrounds, and Bin Laden and others came from one of the WEALTHIEST families in Saudi Arabia and the countries of Arabian Gulf that oil-rich. We know that a lot of the people live in poverty in South America, but they do NOT practice terrorism or Global Terrorism, because the real terrorism is only based on the assumption “evil ideology and thought”.

The Muslim education is taught Taliban curriculum in schools of Islamic world. For instance, the Saudi schoolchildren and most of States of Arabian Gulf spend more than one-third of their classroom time only on religious lessons. Most of schoolchildren in Islamic world educate of KORAN CULTURE AND MUHAMMAD TRADITIONS, ONLY.
You can see in Arab and Muslim world, the illiteracy is very much high, where more than 70 million Arabs are alphabetic illiterates and more than 100 million are educational illiterates. There are almost more than 40 % Alphabetic illiterate in the Arab world, with more than 75 % in Yemen, 78 % in Sudan and more than 79 % in Afghanistan. Let alone so-called in “ARAB INTELLIGENTSIA ELITE”, THEY are extremely late and fossilized. In addition to all our TV programs are under all around control of religion and tyrannical regimes “All our TV programs are very very very very backwards and late, URGING TO HATRED AND VIOLENCE!!!

The Islamic terrorist groups came from the fundamentalist ancestral extreme Islam which resulted in creation of the worldwide terrorist network called “Al-Qaeda”.
The Islamist fundamentalism totalitarian movement FINANCED AND SUPPORTED STRONGLY BY SAUDI ARABIA, where the Saudis provide money for terrorist groups and support a global network of radical Wahhabi mosques and schools that indoctrinate young Muslims in the ways of Jihad ((THE SAUDI ENORMOUS OIL PROCEEDS IN SERVICE OF JIHAD AGAINST ZIONISTS AND CRUSADERS)). Saudi government gave clerics the carte blanche in intervention in affairs of the State, while the corrupt monarchal family is busy with personal corruption and enjoyment.

However, the Muslim culture had NEVER undergone process of modernization and therefore still lacked accept anything new and modern or acceptance the democracy and women. No doubt wherever Islam rules it is just terrible NO human rights, NO animal rights, NO women rights and No democracy in anyone. The Arabic nationalism does NEVER accept democracy,as well.
For example, I TELL YOU AS SYRIAN! The Syrian regime taught us in our fascist schools in Syria– Everyday, we were yelled and repeated this silly slogan ((a pledge of us fatally “we strongly will challenge the imperialism and Zionism , and we will destroy and crush their criminal tool those who are cooperate and sympathized with them, and our leader is FOREVER the president Hafez Alassad). 3 times an everyday in our national fascist Schools in Syria.
But on the other hand, there are a lot of people in the Middle East WANTS peaceful future WITHOUT tyrannical regimes, WITHOUT fundamentalist Islam. THEY JUST NEED YOUR MORAL SUPPORT AND YOUR HELP “YOU THE WESTERN POLICYMAKER AND JOURNALIST”.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to You
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To The United States of America. God Bless The United States And Bless You All

Dec 25, 2008 - 3:56 pm 44. myth buster:

vivo, the problem with that logic is that Obama is just as clueless, if not more so (assuming you agree that he isn’t malicious).

Dec 25, 2008 - 7:40 pm 45. Nick G:

There is a big difference between saying a) Islamic doctrine is compatible with liberal democracy and saying b) Muslims are compatible with democracy. The former is incorrect, the latter is clearly proven to be true, from Turkey to Lebanon to the Philippines to Iraq. Thousands of Iraqis have died fighting not the U.S., but fighting against fascists, alongside the U.S. for their freedom.

There’s a large chunk in Deuteronomy or Leviticus that wouldn’t survive a human rights commission, but that doesn’t mean Jews and Christians can’t live in a democratic society.

So the long-term answer, at least to me, seems to be to help democrats and secularists in the region undermine and discredit Islamist pathology as theocratic and regressive. This might take an entire generation — maybe two. Young Muslim kids must go to school — boys and girls — and learn mathematics, not martyrdom. Their leaders must tap into their people’s ingenuity to thrive, not just their sand dunes. This is eradicating “hopelessness” — however vague that is — and can only further serve the cause of peace. Nobody is disputing that, and I do not think this is what this blog post was saying.

What I’m saying, and what I believe Dr Ledeen is saying, if I can speak for him, is the jihadists themselves exploit other things besides hopelessness. They exploit pride, hatred, racism, sexism; they exploit superiority complexes, and untapped testosterone — all on the promise of eternal glory and afterlife promiscuity. (By they way, Family Guy’s rendition of the 72 virgins is priceless: instead of 72 girls, the dead terrorist finds himself alone with a bunch of geeky middle-aged male computer nerds.)

The short-term response must be to destroy them, politically, militarily, ideologically. The entire Middle East doesn’t have to be a haven of Jeffersonian liberalism to “win” — that’s an attainable byproduct, and will come one day hopefully. But we can do much more, a lot quicker, than abstract things like “winning the hearts and minds of the next generation.” We can’t wait that long. Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s more imminent than that.

Dec 25, 2008 - 10:33 pm 46. kabud:

Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (the former Russian KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998. He was then transferred to Afghanistan where he became Osama Bin Laden’s deputy. I was working in that section at the time and I can confirm the fact Zawahiri was not the only link between the FSB and Al-Qaeda.
———————

Ayman al-Zawahiri: Echoes of Alexander Litvinenko

By Sean Osborne, Associate Director, Military Affairs

6 May 2007 Once again al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri has been seen in a video release. In this new edition al-Zawahiri mocks the American war effort in Iraq and explicitly concurs with the anti-war agenda of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) – under whose leadership, in my opinion, a couple of self-serving Republicans [Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR)] defected from their party and deserted from their personal oaths of office and the engaged-in-combat armed forces of the United States. In fact, Ayman al-Zawahiri reveled in the exact same type of defeatist, anti-American rhetoric we hear coming from the vast flock of sock-puppet parrots in the mainstream U.S. print and electronic media. This is the ultimate significance of the leading ideal in the oath of office, “all enemies foreign or domestic.”

I would be remiss in not reminding the American public, as well as our allies all over the world, that when Ayman al-Zawahiri speaks the distinct harmonic echoes of the late Alexander Litvinenko’s voice are clearly audible. Listen carefully and you will hear those echoes of Litvinenko’s warnings which have been resonating in the ether for the past two to eight years now. The strongest of them all is the quoting of Litvinenko by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita in the Saturday, July 16, 2005 issue.

Yes, America, every time you see, read or hear about a new communication coming from Ayman al-Zawahiri know you that his words are in the service of the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin. Putin is the latest in a string of totalitarian, communist czars whose own rhetoric and actions of late clearly identify the regime as a deadly enemy of the United States of America and our closest allies. Know you also that since 1998 Al-Qaeda under Ayman al-Zawahiri’s leadership is effectively a Russian proxy terrorist force — that the unprovoked mass-murder attacks on September 11, 2001 were planned, authorized, and executed near simultaneously with the Al Qaeda fatwa and very real threat of an ‘American Hiroshima’ by a FSB/KGB-trained operative and tactical asset, one Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Must Read OSINT References: (Use your “Back Arrow” to return to this webpage)

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/node/993

J.R. Nyquist: AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE

Terrorism Monitor: A RUSSIAN AGENT AT THE RIGHT HAND OF BIN LADEN?

Cryptome.Org: Saga of Dr. Zawahri Sheds Light On the Roots of al Qaeda Terror

Dec 26, 2008 - 7:20 am 47. John R:

To Fred:

Your post is brilliant and I completely agree with you. You are so right in noting that our elected officials, academics, media pundits and most others who speak publically on this never approach the topic the way you properly and as I stated, correctly did. I always apply the same test to people who believe the west can rationalize Islam into a civilized religious faith – that is, how much outrage and public demonstrating do we see from the practicing muslims over murderous terrorist attacts? The answer is precious damn little. Why? Because there is NO outrage from muslims! Would the same uniform silence obtain from Roman Catholics? Hell no!

Dec 26, 2008 - 8:08 am 48. Will Becker:

The religion of Islam wants us dead period. What are we going to do about it?

Dec 26, 2008 - 10:08 am 49. Pappadave:

I must say I find very little to criticize in the posts on this issue. I spent 47 weeks, 8 hours per day, 5 1/2 days per week, doing nothing but studying how to speak, read, write and understand Arabic at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, California, back in 1964. Then, the Army in its infinite wisdom, sent me directly to Vietnam and I haven’t met two people since from Arab countries.

However, I must say that, in addition to language, we were taught a great deal of Arabic culture, as well…including quite a bit of religious practice and beliefs. Islam IS, with question, a religion which preaches anything but “peace”…at least “peace” in the sense of non-violence, tolerance and turn-the-other-cheek sort. Quite the contrary, in point of fact.

Jews and Arabs are both “Semetic” peoples, meaning they are descendants of Noah’s son, Shem. Hebrew and Arabic have much in common. For example, in Hebrew, the word for peace is Shalom. In Arabic, it’s Salaam. Supposedly the two groups split when Abraham’s two sons went THEIR separate ways…Abraham’s son by Sarah becoming the father of the Hebrews and his son by his wife’s maid becoming the father of the various Arab nations. Isaac and Ishmael were not known to be bitter enemies, but the two groups became so later in history.

Muhammad is supposed to have united the twelve tribes and thereafter founded Islam, but, unlike Christ, Muhammad was a warrior and he wrote of the necessity of conquest to spread Islam throughout the known world and is the personal author of the Qu’ran which is VERY militant. No matter which variety of Islam–Sunni, Shia, Wahabbi–one choses, the basic teachings of the Qu’ran are identical in that they tEach violence and assure adherents that giving one’s life for the “cause” of spreading Islam will insure paradise in the afterlife. There simply is NO WAY to counter that with logic, or “understanding” or the left’s favorite “solution”…diplomacy.

Dec 26, 2008 - 10:28 am 50. Michael Ledeen:

Great comments, thanks for taking the time to write. I do want to pick up on Kabud’s suggestion that Zawahiri was trained by the Russians. I don’t know how reliable Litvinenko’s testimony is/was, but there should certainly not be any great surprise if it is true.

Indeed, you’ll see in my next book, “Accomplice to Evil,” that jihadism is in some ways a child of 20th century totalitarianism, and many leading jihadis, for example the “mufti of Jerusalem,” mr. al Hussayni, was a protege of both Communist Moscow and Nazi Berlin. He never met a totalitarian he didn’t like, as long as killing the Jews was high on the agenda.

Laurent Murawiec argues convincingly in his terrific book, “The Mind of Jihad,” that the jihadis learned a lot of organizational methods from Lenin and Stalin, and a lot of the technology of mass murder, along with a lot of racist anti-semitism, from the Fuhrer.

Dec 26, 2008 - 3:01 pm 51. BC:

To DJ:

*All* the evidence so far clearly indicates that Bush and his people never had anything resembling a well thought out, well researched plan for anything they did, pre or post 9/11. They might as well have been a bunch of drunken, frat boy hicks given the results of their decisions.

And this has nothing to do with the question of whether to pull out or not: Bush’s policies just made the world a more unsafe place and the Middle East even more of a mess for Obama to deal with. The point is that bin Laden won: he orchestrated the most serious, most successful attack on US soil in modern history and was not only able to get away with it, but it also ended up with his desired results.

It’ll be nice to have grown-ups deciding foreign policy again….

Dec 26, 2008 - 3:42 pm 52. kabud:

To 50. Michael Ledeen:
————————
Wall Street Journal reported the same KGB-al Qaeda a connection. here for you reading pleasure:

2 July 2002
Source: Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2002

The files of the Kabul laptop referenced here were encrypted. The WSJ got the US government to decrypt the files according to news reports in January 2002. The type of encryption has not been revealed. Cryptome emailed Higgins and Cullison for information on the encryption but no answer yet.

Saga of Dr. Zawahri Sheds Light On the Roots of al Qaeda Terror
How a Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter’s Focus to America and bin Laden

By ANDREW HIGGINS and ALAN CULLISON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The many faces of Ayman al-Zawahri: (left to right) from fake Sudanese passport used to enter Russia in 1996; from forged Cairo University graduate certificate; with Osama bin Laden in 2001.

DERBENT, Russia — On a winter night five years ago, Ayman al-Zawahri slipped into Russia across a narrow wedge of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. Dr. Zawahri, now America’s most wanted man after Osama bin Laden, was on a risky clandestine mission as head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a militant group that was scattered, battered and nearly bankrupt after years on the run.

His purpose: to scope out Chechnya as a possible sanctuary for his wounded cause. Traveling in a minivan with two confederates, he came equipped with $6,400 in cash, a fake identity as a businessman, a laptop computer, a satellite phone, a fax machine and a small library of medical textbooks.

His plans quickly unraveled. After a night of furtive travel, the Egyptian trio ran into a Russian roadblock on the outskirts of this ancient walled city. Police, seeing they had no visas, handed them over to the Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet version of the KGB. Dr. Zawahri spent the next six months in a crumbling jail, fretting that the Russians would discover his true identity and lock him up for years or send him back to Egypt to face likely execution.

In the end, his cover held, and he was freed. Still, Dr. Zawahri’s brush with disaster, previously known to only a few Islamist chieftains, forced a critical change in his lethal planning. It also set the stage, ultimately, for Sept. 11 and the global war now under way between America and terrorists under the banner of al Qaeda. Instead of Chechnya, Afghanistan began the locus of his terrorist plotting. And America, not Egypt, became the target.

The Wall Street Journal has pieced together the story of how this happened from interviews with Islamist activists and investigators, court files and documents contained on an al Qaeda computer found in the Afghan capital of Kabul. It illuminates the evolution, motives and also weaknesses of what is today America’s principal enemy.

Through apocalyptic violence and a cult of secrecy, Islamic militants torment the West with the specter of a highly disciplined and unshakably united foe. In reality, they have regularly been torn by venomous policy disputes, personal feuds and repeated failures. The Sept. 11 cataclysm both masked and flowed from militant Islam’s truest feature: disarray and an inability to take and hold power in almost any Islamic country since Iran in 1979.

Islamists preaching revolution in Egypt and elsewhere were in retreat, not ascendancy. Attacking America, Dr. Zawahri hoped, would reinvigorate and unite their cause. His story shows from the inside how the down-on-his-luck Egyptian Jihad leader came to link up with Osama bin Laden and contribute a critical arsenal of terrorist skills and manpower to the cause.

Freed from Russian jail in May 1997, Dr. Zawahri found refuge in Afghanistan, yoking his fortunes to Mr. bin Laden. Egyptian Jihad, previously devoted to the narrow purpose of toppling secular rule in Egypt, became instead the biggest component of al Qaeda and major agent of a global war against America. Dr. Zawahri became Mr. bin Laden’s closest confidant and talent scout.

“Zawahri was cornered. He had nowhere to go. He joined with bin Laden because he needed protection,” says Hani al-Sebai, a former Egyptian Jihad activist who spent time in a Cairo jail with Dr. Zawahri in 1981.

Eight months after the Russian fiasco, Dr. Zawahri and Mr. bin Laden announced an alliance dedicated to killing Americans, a task they called the “duty of every Muslim.”

The wealthy Mr. bin Laden provided some money, a safe haven and global horizons. Dr. Zawahri provided a seasoned cadre of operatives steeped in the tradecraft and theology of terrorism. He also provided a bureaucracy, which, though jury-rigged and prone to infighting, gave some structure to what they called “the company.” Thus, says Montasser al-Zayat, a Cairo lawyer once close to Dr. Zawahri, the Egyptian doctor became “the brains of bin Laden.”

The alliance frequently wobbled, buffeted by defections and disagreements. Some activists complained that Mr. bin Laden was a skinflint and a publicity hound. Dr. Zawahri pressed on, and in May of last year, he rallied his followers for a climactic battle against America alongside his partner.

“Stop digging problems from the grave,” he pleaded in a letter to followers that was stored on the computer in Kabul, dated May 31, 2001, and signed with one of Dr. Zawahri’s aliases. Mr. bin Laden, he said, had a “project” that needed their support. “Our friend has been successful and is seriously preparing for other successful jobs … . Gathering together is a pillar for our success.” Four months later, the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumpled.

After the attack, the al Qaeda computer was used to store television images of the inferno, kept in a video file. Its name: “The Big Job.”

Schoolbooks and Zealotry

Dr. Zawahri, now 51, plunged early into the turbulent and turbid waters of radical Islam. As a teenager in Cairo he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a relatively moderate but banned organization. Egyptian security officials began compiling files on him when he was just 16.

Thanks to good grades and the solid bourgeois reputation of his prosperous family, he won a place at Cairo University. Graduating with a medical degree in 1974, he began a double life as a family doctor and underground activist.

His first contact with armed jihad came in 1980, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He went to Pakistan for a four-month stint at a clinic for Afghan refugees that a Muslim Brotherhood member set up, later serving a second tour there. Then came Egyptian Jihad’s 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat. Dr. Zawahri wasn’t involved but, like many others, was thrown in jail.

He spent three years in a medieval prison known as the Citadel, where, according to fellow Islamists, he hardened his views, made contacts and, under torture, snitched on some of his friends. In an account of this period written years later, Dr. Zawahri fulminated against the brutality of his jailers, whom he accused of torturing to death the founder of the Afghan refugee clinic where he’d worked. Egyptian authorities said the man committed suicide.

Furious that the Muslim Brotherhood “did not act to avenge his blood,” and radicalized by his own prison ordeal, Dr. Zawahri embraced the violent ardor of Egyptian Jihad. Mr. al-Zayat, who was jailed in an adjoining cell, says they spent many hours discussing how to bring Islamic rule to Egypt. He remembers Dr. Zawahri as “very calm in character” but “very violent and strong in his ideas.”

Freed, Dr. Zawahri returned briefly to his practice of medicine. His office was on the second floor of his family’s home in the Cairo suburb of Maadi, on a leafy side street where vendors sold vegetables and live chickens from donkey-drawn carts. But within a year, he left Egypt to work full time with the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. The eventual defeat of the Soviets thrilled him. “It is as if 100 years were added to my life when I came to Afghanistan,” he wrote later. Intoxicated by the victory, he set about to repeat it in Egypt, operating from Yemen and then Sudan.

Bloody Attacks

In 1993 he became head of Egyptian Jihad — and promptly launched bloody attacks. One was a disaster: A car bomb, instead of blowing up the prime minister, killed an Egyptian schoolgirl. His group and a rival militant organization also struck at tourists, massacring foreigners at ancient ruins and elsewhere.

The government fought back ruthlessly, and many militants who had stayed in Egypt were imprisoned, killed in shoot-outs or executed after secret trials. Leading Islamists called for a cease-fire. But Dr. Zawahri stuck to his guns, writing in a 1995 article that even the struggle for Israel must wait until the battle for Egypt was won. Too bruised inside Egypt to cause carnage there, his group instead hit Egypt’s embassy in Pakistan, killing 17.

Under pressure from Egypt, Sudan a year later booted out Dr. Zawahri and many other foreign militants, including Mr. bin Laden, a Saudi exile who had also found shelter there. After three years as leader of Egyptian Jihad, Dr. Zawahri had no real following left in his homeland and no secure base elsewhere. He began wandering the world in search of a haven.

An uncle, Mahfuz Azzam, says Dr. Zawahri always hid his movements even from his family. Aides sometimes spread false reports of his whereabouts. Arabic-language newspapers began reporting that he had moved to Switzerland. A Cairo journalist tells of receiving faxes saying Dr. Zawahri had scheduled a “jihad conference” at a Geneva hotel. A day before the meeting, the journalist, Mohmad Salaah, was told it had been canceled. He suspects it was all a hoax to put security forces off the scent.

Dr. Zawahri’s Russian arrest records, however, give some clues to his activities.

Documents the Russians found on Dr. Zawahri and his companions included a visa application for Taiwan; a bank card from Hong Kong; details of a bank account in Guangdong, China; a receipt for a computer modem bought in Dubai; a copy of a Malaysian company’s registration certificate that listed Dr. Zawahri, under an alias, as a director; and details of an account in a bank in St. Louis, Mo.

According to Russian records of entry stamps in a fake Sudanese passport seized after Dr. Zawahri’s arrest, in the 20 months before he sneaked into Russia, he traveled to Yemen four times, to Malaysia three times, to Singapore twice and once to “China” — believed to be a reference to Taiwan, which calls itself the Republic of China.

Road to Chechnya

He crossed the border to Russia around 4 a.m. on Dec. 1, 1996, accompanied by two Egyptian Jihad underlings and a guide provided by Chechen “brothers,” according to an account of the trip he wrote later that was filed on the computer found in Kabul. His companions were Ahmad Salama Mabruk, who ran Egyptian Jihad’s cell in Azerbaijan under the cover of a trading firm called Bavari-C, and Mahmud Hisham al-Hennawi, a militant widely traveled in Asia.

The trip, Dr. Zawahri told his lieutenants later, was perilous but necessary: Their group desperately needed a secure base. Russia’s rebellious Chechnya region — Muslim, chaotic and then effectively independent — was promising. “Conditions there were excellent,” he wrote.

To disguise their tracks, they changed vehicles three times, Dr. Zawahri wrote. He traveled on a Sudanese passport in the name of Abdullah Imam Mohammed Amin. It carried a photograph of an earnest, balding man with a tie, trim moustache and a very short beard. Mr. Mabruk and Mr. Hennawi also used false names and bogus passports, one from Sudan and the other from Egypt.

But they were arrested within hours of entering Russia’s Dagestan region. The Federal Security Service seized their belongings and sent their laptop to Moscow for analysis. After a few days of interrogation, the three were moved north to a frigid prison on a hill overlooking Makhachkala, the regional capital.

Russians who met them vividly recall the trio, who they say kept falling to their knees in prayer. Dr. Zawahri’s identification as “Mr. Amin” included two forged graduation certificates from Cairo University’s medical faculty, each with a different date. The travelers’ cash hoard was in seven currencies: from the U.S., Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Malaysia and Kuwait.

Looking into Bavari-C, the Azeri trading firm the Arabs said they represented, the Russians found no such business registered in Azerbaijan. Residents at the address given, in a cluster of grimy Soviet-era apartment blocks in Baku, say that some Arabs once rented a tiny basement storeroom, near a big sign advertising Bavaria Beer, but left.

Lobbying for Release

The Russian investigators and a lawyer who defended the trio were puzzled by a groundswell of support for them from local Islamic organizations. These included groups that had embraced the fundamentalist form of Islam known as Wahhabism and received funding from Saudi Arabia, where the sect emerged two centuries ago. Twenty-six clerics signed an appeal for release of the three “merchants.” One local Muslim accused a Russian investigator of doing “the devil’s work” by detaining the three.

A member of Russia’s parliament, Nadyr Khachiliev, who had founded a group called the Muslim Union of Russia, wrote to Dagestan’s highest court that the three “businessmen” had come to “study the market for food trade” and should be freed. Mr. Khachiliev, a wiry former boxer linked by the police to a string of violent attacks, denies any tie to extremism. Interviewed in his gothic brick mansion in Makhachkala, its outer wall and metal door pock-marked from gunfire, Mr. Khachiliev today says he can’t recall any imprisoned Arabs.

The Russians received a plea from a man claiming to be a director of Bavari-C. “Honesty and decency,” he wrote, were the “integral features” of the arrested Arabs’ character. Two other men arrived in Dagestan to join the lobbying, claiming to be businessmen affiliated with Bavari-C. In reality, both worked for Egyptian Jihad. They were Ibrahim Eidarous, an activist in Baku and later London, and Tharwat Salah Shehata, a veteran who later became head of Egyptian Jihad.

Mr. Shehata won permission to visit Dr. Zawahri in jail and was given a coded letter. The Russians copied it but couldn’t understand it. After the visit, says a former Russian official, guards found $3,000 hidden in the Arabs’ cell.

Correspondence on the Kabul computer and wiretaps by the Russian police suggest frenetic maneuvering behind the scenes. A person familiar with the Russian investigation says security services overheard telephone discussions of a $10,000 bribe offer by the head of the Dagestan town of Karamakhi, a center of fundamentalist fervor that later was reduced to rubble by Russian troops. One investigator says he suspected the three were terrorist “big fish” en route to Chechnya, but couldn’t prove it.

On Trial

When the case got to court in April 1997, Dr. Zawahri, held in a pen with metal bars, lied fluently and prayed frequently. The judge had to call several recesses because of the defendants’ disruptive piety. Testifying as “Mr. Amin,” Dr. Zawahri feigned ignorance of Russia’s post-Soviet frontiers, saying: “I couldn’t imagine that such problems could arise.”

Why had he come to Russia? “We wanted to find out the price for leather, medicine and other goods,” he said.

The judge rejected prosecution demands for a three-year sentence and gave the men only six months. They’d already been in jail five months, so the Russians soon freed them.

“God blinded them to our identities,” Dr. Zawahri wrote later, in his account of his trip. “God’s mercy accompanied us during these months.” The Russians returned the cash, the communications gear and the computer, its mostly Arabic-language documents nearly all unread. Abulkhalik Abdusalamov, their court-appointed lawyer, says he never got close to his clients and couldn’t figure out what they were up to or why they were carrying so much electronic equipment. He says all he knows is that they stiffed him on his $1,800 legal bill, pleading poverty. “There was no honesty in their soul. They cheated me,” he says.

After his release, Dr. Zawahri spent 10 days meeting secretly with Islamists in Dagestan. “We delivered our product to them,” he wrote in his report, using a frequent code word for recipes for explosives. He also sent Mr. Shehata to Chechnya to meet with Abu Khattab, a Saudi who was among the most prominent Arabs fighting Russian forces in Chechnya in the 1990s. (Mr. Khattab died in March, poisoned by one of his own men.)

Dr. Zawahri faced intense questioning by followers who hadn’t been told of his Russia journey. One angrily demanded an explanation for his “mysterious disappearance.” But instead of the facts, some followers got only a smokescreen, perhaps designed to prevent suspicions of betrayal that might arise from such a quick release from Russian arrest. Mr. Sebai in London says he was told Dr. Zawahri had been seized by one of the kidnapping-for-ransom gangs active in the region. Meanwhile, Western terrorism experts trying to explain the absence came up with various theories of their own, all of them wrong.

Dr. Zawahri developed an ulcer in this period, prompting get-well messages from confederates but not defanging their criticism. “We ask God to grant you recovery from your ulcer, but this illness is not too serious to prevent you from working,” said a letter sent by mutinous militants in Yemen. They denounced the Russian trip as “a disaster that almost destroyed the group” and lamented there hadn’t been “any progress in Egypt for two years.” Dr. Zawahri ought to cure Egyptian Jihad’s ill health along with his own, they said.

With bin Laden

Running out of both friends and hiding places, Dr. Zawahri settled in Afghanistan, by this time largely ruled by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban. The move signaled a dramatic change not just of scenery but also of strategy.

On Feb. 23, 1998, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an Arabic-language newspaper, published a statement that set off alarms in Washington. Announcing an alliance between Dr. Zawahri and Mr. bin Laden, it declared the founding of the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders. The front, including three other militant groups, said in its founding manifesto: “We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim … to comply with God’s order to kill Americans.”

The call overturned Dr. Zawahri’s prior diktat that the struggle for Egypt trumped all other battles. Explaining the shift later, he said an Islamic state in Egypt remained the goal but was “not an easy objective that is close at hand.” America, he said, propped up “infidel” Arab governments and would let them fall “only if the shrapnel from the battle reaches their own homes and bodies.”

The new approach rattled some members of Egyptian Jihad, who thought it unwise to take on the world’s superpower. The head of the group’s Islamic-law committee, in Yemen, derided it as a “great illusion.” Why, he asked cuttingly in a note stored on the Kabul computer, had Dr. Zawahri not gone to “Egypt to perform the work there that he says he supports so much?” And he complained — without elaborating — that Mr. bin Laden had a “dark past” and a “black history” and could not be trusted.

Some militants demanded an emergency meeting, according to a letter seized by police raids in London. “There is a deep abyss in thinking,” the March 1998 letter said. Not that the world need know this. “Needless to say,” the letter added, “it is forbidden to discuss the content of this message with anybody outside the group.”

The emergency meeting took place the next month in Afghanistan. Its minutes, faxed to militants abroad and later seized by London police, allude to the discord in flaccid bureaucratic language. More spirited is an account by one militant, Tariq Anwar. Apologizing for the dry vagueness of the faxed minutes, he said that a more honest account would have led to “arguments that would take us 10 years to finish … since we would disagree on every word.”

He reported that Dr. Zawahri had repeatedly threatened to resign; had denounced his own brother, military commander Mohammed Zawahri; and had revealed that financial accounts for two years were missing. “Everybody agreed this was a disaster,” wrote Mr. Anwar, his account stored in the Kabul computer. “I expected some members to start wrestling each other. I always felt this entity may dissolve in seconds.”

Trouble in Albania

These same issues — Mr. bin Laden, money, inertia in Muslim states and the wisdom of baiting America — would convulse Egyptian Jihad and the whole Islamist movement for the next three years.

The debate gained new urgency when the Central Intelligence Agency began a covert campaign to arrest Egyptian Jihad activists hiding in Albania, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan and ship them home to Egypt. Among those returned was Mr. Mabruk, one of Dr. Zawahri’s cellmates in Russia. Egypt gave him 15 years in prison, according to Islamist activists.

In July 1998, Dr. Zawahri received an SOS from “Akram,” an alias of Ahmed Saleh, an Egyptian Jihad member working in Albania. Mr. Saleh was wanted in Egypt for the car bombing that killed the schoolgirl. He said two Jihad friends had just been grabbed by U.S. agents. “I want to leave quickly. Please help,” he pleaded. Two weeks later, Mr. Saleh, too, was arrested. He was flown on a CIA-chartered plane to Cairo, where he was hanged 18 months later.

Complaints and warnings cascaded into Afghanistan by fax, telephone and courier. In one intercepted by British security services, an Egyptian Jihad leader in Yemen said the alliance with Mr. bin Laden, who was known as “the Contractor,” had caused “continuous catastrophes.” He added, “If you keep receiving messages through the Contractor’s system a big and huge disaster will occur.”

Dr. Zawahri paid little heed. On Aug. 4, 1998, Egyptian Jihad denounced the CIA-led arrests in Albania and said America would soon receive a response “in the only language that they understand.” Three days later, terrorists blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 220 people, mostly Africans. The blasts, according to court testimony in New York last year, were planned by a top Egyptian Jihad commander, Mohammed Atef.

The U.S. responded with a cruise-missile strike on an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Shortly afterward, Dr. Zawahri used Mr. bin Laden’s satellite phone to call a Pakistani journalist, saying he and Mr. bin Laden were safe and adding: “The war has only just begun.”

Rancor in the Ranks

The militants’ internal war, meanwhile, was heating up, fueled by fear of America’s fury and by frustration at penny-pinching. The Yemen chapter ran through three leaders in just a few months. In London, Mr. Eidarous, one of those who traveled to Russia to seek Dr. Zawahri’s release, also quit. The British police arrested him shortly afterward.

Several activists the CIA nabbed and sent to Egypt began to talk, revealing code names and hiding places. More arrests followed. Egyptian Jihad issued a new list of code names and a new system of numerical coding for messages.

Money grew tighter. Dr. Zawahri cut members’ salaries in half and quibbled over their expense reports. “Why did you buy a new fax machine for $470? Where are the two old ones? Did you get permission to buy a new one?” he chided the Yemen cell. “Please explain the mobile phone invoice … . Stop all expenses unless it is an emergency!”

The Yemen cell’s chief sent a huffy reply: “The first step to implement this advice is my immediate resignation.”

To balance the books, Dr. Zawahri borrowed from members and scrounged from Mr. bin Laden. Monthly accounts list expenses ranging from $3 for an inner tube to $3,200 for a failed effort to spring a jailed activist with a bribe. There are multiple IOUs to members, particularly one code-named “Sami.” Sami later quit, too.

Squeezed by America, by Egypt and by parts of his own group, Dr. Zawahri stepped down as leader of Egyptian Jihad in summer 1999. Taking his place was Mr. Shehata, the militant who had visited him in jail in Russia. Mr. Shehata, according to Mr. Sebai, the London-based Islamist, wanted to limit ties with Mr. bin Laden because “it was far more important to fight against the regime in Egypt than America.”

But Dr. Zawahri’s travails only fortified his own commitment to global struggle. He began exploring chemical and biological weapons around this time, exchanging notes with Mr. Atef on how to build a laboratory for what they dubbed the “Zabadi” — yogurt — program. Fluent in English and French, Dr. Zawahri studied foreign medical journals and provided Arabic-language summaries. The program, though fearsome in intent, seems to have gotten off to a slow start. It had an initial budget of just $2,000.

In the summer of 2000, Dr. Zawahri wrote a series of letters to radical clerics in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Britain urging them to decamp to Afghanistan, praising the Taliban-ruled country as a “den of ‘garrisoned’ lions” from Muslim countries. The struggle against Islam’s enemies, he said, was moving into high gear. “We haven’t changed despite claims otherwise,” he told Abu Quttada, a Jordan-born militant preacher in London whose prayer sessions, according to investigators, were attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the flight student arrested in Minnesota and now facing trial in Virginia.

Also in 2000, Dr. Zawahri began work on a book, “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet.” He didn’t anticipate a best seller: “I expect no publisher to publish it or any distributor to distribute it.” But the book, a draft of which is on the Kabul computer, explains the evolution of his thinking. “The battle today cannot be fought on just a regional level,” he writes, arguing that America must replace Arab countries as the main arena for combat.

‘Maximum Casualties’

He gives an ominous warning: “We must move the battle to the enemy’s grounds to burn the hands of those who ignite fire in our own countries.” The “only language understood by the West,” he writes, is “maximum casualties.”

But Dr. Zawahri’s replacement, Mr. Shehata, presided over yet more setbacks. In early 2000, Dr. Zawahri’s brother, Mohammed, vanished. Egyptian Jihad said on its Web site that he’d been seized in the United Arab Emirates and sent back to Cairo. Egyptian security officials deny any knowledge of his whereabouts, as does his family in Cairo. There have been whispers in Islamic circles that he was detained and possibly murdered by fellow militants for theft or treachery.

Meanwhile, four influential veterans quit, voicing disgust at “the thinking and management, whether old or new.” Like earlier deserters, they vowed to keep their departure secret. “We will try to give the impression that we are coordinating with the group to preserve the image,” reads a joint letter filed on the Kabul computer.

Mr. Shehata gave up. Dr. Zawahri resumed control of Egyptian Jihad. Another bulletin went out to members to try explain this latest convulsion. “The heart is full of pain, sorrow and bitterness … . There is a new problem and a new dispute every day,” it said.

Mr. Shehata had been unfit to lead, said the report, because he had attacked Dr. Zawahri as a “liar, a sinner and a cheat,” had thrown stones at an accountant and called him a homosexual, and had pushed others “to the brink of explosion.” It said some members, upset with Mr. Shehata’s tantrums, “left the city to avoid meeting or even seeing” him.

Back in command, Dr. Zawahri did what he’d always done in difficult times: upped the ante. Only bold action, he argued, could heal divisions, rally new recruits and revive the cause. Using code words borrowed from global commerce, he warned of increased market share for “international monopolies” — Western security agencies — and urged a full “merger” with the wealthy “Contractor,” Mr. bin Laden. Only this, he said, could “increase profits” — the publicity and support that terrorism could produce.

Some rejected his blueprint. “These are not profits. They are rather a compound of losses,” replied one member, arguing for a focus on Egypt. He accused Dr. Zawahri of “following the Contractor blindly” and said that “going on in this dead end is like fighting ghosts and windmills. Enough pouring musk on barren land!”

Others applauded the approach. “We encourage the merger with the Contractor’s company as long as it leads to stimulating profitable trade” and “ends the state of inertia we are in now,” said one.

The merger went through. In June 2001, Egyptian Jihad and al Qaeda drafted “Statement No. 1″ under a new “company” name: Qaeda-al Jihad Group. Islam’s enemies, it said, “will soon roast in the same flames that they now play with.”

Desperation had hardened into clear strategy. A month later, someone sat down at the computer in Kabul and composed a short, blunt text, trumpeting “martyrdom operations” against the West. Its title: “The Solution.”

Where Is He Now?

Dr. Zawahri was last seen on a videotape made somewhere in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime and broadcast in April. It shows him sitting cross-legged in a rocky field next to Mr. bin Laden. He has a long beard and turban, and looks decades older than in the photo in the fake passport he took to Russia. The tape was obtained by the Arabic-language television channel Al Jazeera.

But it is unclear when the tape was made, where Dr. Zawahri is now and even whether he is alive. The British government has received persistent reports he was killed, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said six months ago. U.S. officials have not confirmed this.

Last month, a radical Muslim cleric who was with al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan asserted in an audio message that Dr. Zawahri and Mr. Bin Laden are in “good health” and preparing new attacks. Americans, said the cleric, Suleimain Abu Gaith, “should fasten their seat belts. We are coming to them where they never expected.”

The last person claiming to have talked to Dr. Zawahri is Farrag Ismail, a Cairo journalist who covered the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. After Sept. 11, he asked officials close to the Taliban to help arrange an interview. He said his phone finally rang in late November, after U.S.-backed forces had overrun most of Afghanistan, Mr. Atef had been killed in a U.S. missile attack, and Dr. Zawahri’s wife and three children were rumored to have been killed by U.S. bombing near Kandahar. Dr. Zawahri’s relatives in Cairo later published a notice announcing their deaths.

Mr. Ismail said he spoke with Dr. Zawahri briefly and then had a written exchange with him through a Taliban intermediary. Mr. Ismail offered Dr. Zawahri condolences for the loss of his wife and daughters. “They are fine,” he says Dr. Zawahri replied. “No condolences should be offered for martyrdom if they were granted it.”

On the run again and surrounded by destruction, Dr. Zawahri claimed “remarkable victories during the past days.” He repeated what, since his retreat to Afghanistan after the debacle in Russia, had become his mantra: “The real war has started now.”

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com

Dec 26, 2008 - 8:07 pm 53. sherlock:

Spent an hour reading this thread and I am heartened that so many (for example Elizabeth) see the problem so clearly, and even more to the point, show us that despite all our ambrace of diversity, we do not comprehend that we share the Earth with an ethos that is almost the exact inverse of our own. Our own material, cultural and (yes) ethical maturity lulls us into assuming that our values are so attractive as to be the key to reforming that inverted system. It is as if we assumed that we could cure criminality through the demonstration of the benefits of not acting criminally, by freeing all the cirminals. Of course, many “progressives” actually think this way depite the fact that in our society, nobody is forced by want into a life of crime, yet our jails are full of recidivists!

Of course for every clear insight, there are the laughable assertions such as that islamic terrorists are influenced, and even more hilariously, that they are moderated, by our foreign policies!

Dec 28, 2008 - 2:46 pm 54. SeattleBruce:

Say Vivo (#40) – with all the coherent commentary discussing all aspects of these issues that’s the best you can come up with? What a patent joke. Why do most liberals not even try to understand the historical, geopolitical and religious standpoints of these matters? No wonder conservatives and independents are suspect of liberals and leftists views on these matters – they simply don’t articulate their attacks on Bush’s and the WOT generally well.

If you’re a pacifist – just state so, and we’ll understand your religious objections. But even Ghandi had to modify his approach visa vi the threat of Hitler. So if that’s not your take and you’re just consumed with some irrational exuberance of hate toward Bush (why again?) – then just deal with your emotions, pipe down and discuss the future in some more rational fashion.

The rest of the civilized world would greatly appreciate some effort on your behalf toward coherence.

Dec 28, 2008 - 3:29 pm 55. Jassem Othman - From the Middle East:

Al-Zawahiri don’t deserve to call him in “Dr or Mr”, he is terrible terrorist came from “Egypt’s caves to Afghanistan’s caves”.
I think Prof. Ledeen knows already enough about Al-Zawahiri’s criminal history. Don’t give him that interest rather we have to strike them strongly so that the world be safer.
Today “the War on Terrorism” became phrase annoy some western policymakers, no doubt it is a major cause of the West resentment to facing the enemy if not completely “SURRENDER AND WEAKNESS”, EVEN WE HEAR THAT IN POLITICAL SPEECH. Most probably, that anti-America pro-evil leaders someday will use the frustrated terrorists for achieving their hateful aims against the US or Europe. WAKE UP, PLEASE!!!

Dec 28, 2008 - 5:07 pm 56. Fred2:

The goal isn’t to make the radical muslims rich. The goal is to make them poor. Countries like Chad and Malawi don’t make trouble.

Afghanistan is terribly poor, it is true, but the troublemakers come from wealthy Saudi Arabia. If Arabia had no oil revenue — no al-Queda, no trouble from the Taliban.

Dec 28, 2008 - 5:33 pm 57. j green:

Dr. Ledeen’s analysis is spot on, as usual. One cannot simply write-off that comment by Bush about despair as something “off-the-cuff” and then say “just cut the guy some slack because it may not have been a fully thought-out response”. It can’t be written-off to intellectual clumsiness. This error of Bush’s demonstates that he still doesn’t comprehend a fundamental truth about terrorism that, by now, he should be able to recite in his sleep (forget WSJ interviews aboard Air Force One). How do you fight terrorists when you don’t how terrorists are made or what type of background they typically come from?

While I think Bush has been a good president, I, too, am disappointed that he goofed on such an elementary point.

Dec 28, 2008 - 7:41 pm 58. Pappadave:

With 90% of the middle east madrassas teaching Muslim kids, almost from birth, that it’s their “duty to God” to kill those who aren’t also Muslim, this isn’t going to be an easy problem to solve–even if it IS solvable. Where our kids get birthday gifts of candy, cake, ice cream and maybe a doll or model train or a bicycle, Muslim kids get candy and cake and a dagger or even an AK-47 along with detailed instruction on how to kill someone with either…especially Jews. It doesn’t have to be a madrassa that’s well-known as radical. They ALL teach the same thing because they teach from the Qu’ran which stresses that “duty” of all Muslims. Take a look at ANY textbook used in one of these schools. You’ll be shocked at its militancy–even for pre-schoolers.

Dec 28, 2008 - 9:14 pm

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