[IP] September 11 and Its Aftermath: a strategic analysis
Begin forwarded message:
From: Barry Ritholtz <ritholtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 12, 2004 7:02:46 AM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: September 11 and Its Aftermath: a strategic analysis
Hi Dave,
Juan Cole is a history professor at University of Michigan. His
historian's eye looks for underlying motivations and goals involved in
significant world events. That approach appeals to me as a professional
strategist.
Cole's explanation of the strategy behind the 9/11 attacks is not only
plausible, but rather persuasive. I suspect IP readers will appreciate
his unemotional take on the logical rationale behind bin Laden's
thinking re: 9/11.
Regards,
Barry L. Ritholtz
Chief Market Strategist
Maxim Group
britholtz@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(212) 895-3614
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September 11 and Its Aftermath
http://www.juancole.com/
2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109487993311862124
Saturday, September 11, 2004
"Bin Laden sees the Muslim world as continually invaded, divided and
weakened by outside forces. Among these is the Americans in Saudi
Arabia and the Israelis in geographical Palestine. He repeatedly
complained about the occupation of the three holy cities, i.e., Mecca,
Medina and Jerusalem. For al-Qaeda to succeed, it must overthrow the
individual nation-states in the Middle East, most of them colonial
creations, and unite them into a single, pan-Islamic state. But Ayman
al-Zawahiri's organization, al-Jihad al-Islami, had tried very hard to
overthrow the Egyptian state, and was always checked. Al-Zawahiri
thought it was because of US backing for Egypt. They believed that the
US also keeps Israel dominant in the Levant, and backs Saudi Arabia's
royal family.
Al-Zawahiri then hit upon the idea of attacking the "far enemy" first.
That is, since the United States was propping up the governments of
Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., all of which al-Qaeda wanted
to overthrow so as to meld them into a single, Islamic super-state,
then it would hit the United States first.
The attack on the World Trade Center was exactly analogous to Pearl
Harbor. The Japanese generals had to neutralize the US fleet so that
they could sweep into Southeast Asia and appropriate Indonesian
petroleum. The US was going to cut off imperial Japan from petroleum,
and without fuel the Japanese could not maintain their empire in China
and Korea. So they pushed the US out of the way and took an
alternative source of petroleum away from the Dutch (which then ruled
what later became Indonesia).
Likewise, al-Qaeda was attempting to push the United States out of the
Middle East so that Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia would become
more vulnerable to overthrow, lacking a superpower patron.
Secondarily, the attack was conceived as revenge on the United States
and American Jews for supporting Israel and the severe oppression of
the Palestinians. Bin Laden wanted to move the timing of the operation
up to spring of 2001 so as to "punish" the Israelis for their actions
against the Palestinians in the second Intifadah. Khalid Shaikh
Muhammad was mainly driven in planning the attack by his rage at Israel
over the Palestinian issue. Another goal is to destroy the US economy,
so weakening it that it cannot prevent the emergence of the Islamic
superpower.
Al-Qaeda wanted to build enthusiasm for the Islamic superstate among
the Muslim populace, to convince ordinary Muslims that the US could be
defeated and they did not have to accept the small, largely secular,
and powerless Middle Eastern states erected in the wake of colonialism.
Jordan's population, e.g. is 5.6 million. Tunisia, a former French
colony, is 10 million, less than Michigan. Most Muslims have been
convinced of the naturalness of the nation-state model and are proud of
their new nations, however small and weak. Bin Laden had to do a big
demonstration project to convince them that another model is possible.
Bin Laden hoped the US would timidly withdraw from the Middle East.
But he appears to have been aware that an aggressive US response to
9/11 was entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan B: al-Qaeda
hoped to draw the US into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan
and do to the US military what they had earlier done to the Soviets.
Al-Zawahiri's recent message shows that he still has faith in that
strategy.
The US cleverly outfoxed al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, using air power and
local Afghan allies (the Northern Alliance) to destroy the Taliban
without many American boots on the ground.
Ironically, however, the Bush administration then went on to invade
Iraq for no good reason, where Americans faced the kind of wearing
guerrilla war they had avoided in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda has succeeded in several of its main goals. It had been
trying to convince Muslims that the United States wanted to invade
Muslim lands, humiliate Muslim men, and rape Muslim women. Most
Muslims found this charge hard to accept. The Bush administration's
Iraq invasion, along with the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal, was
perceived by many Muslims to validate Bin Laden's wisdom and
foresightedness.
After the Iraq War, Bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush even
in a significantly secular Muslim country such as Turkey. This is a
bizarre finding, a weird turn of events. Turks didn't start out with
such an attitude. It grew up in reaction against US policies.
It remains to be seen whether the US will be forced out of Iraq the way
it was forced out of Iran in 1979. If so, as al-Zawahiri says, that
will be a huge victory. A recent opinion poll did find that over 80
percent of Iraqis want an Islamic state. If Iraq goes Islamist, that
will be the biggest victory the movement has had since the rise of the
Taliban in Afghanistan. An Islamist Iraq might well be able ultimately
to form a joint state with Syria, starting the process of the formation
of the Islamic superstate of which Bin Laden dreams.
If the Muslim world can find a way to combine the sophisticated
intellectuals and engineers of Damascus and Cairo with the oil wealth
of the Persian Gulf, it could well emerge as a 21st century superpower.
Bin Laden's dream of a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate
may well be impossible to accomplish. But with the secular Baath gone,
it could be one step closer to reality. If you add to the equation the
generalized hatred for US policies (both against the Palestinians and
in Iraq) among Muslims, that is a major step forward for al-Qaeda. In
Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda has emerged as a dissident political party.
Before it had just been a small group of Bin Laden's personal acolytes
in Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.
Although the United States and its Pakistani ally have captured
significant numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
a whole new generation of angry young Muslim men has been produced.
Al-Qaeda has moved from being a concrete cell-based terrorist
organization to being an ideal and a model, for small local groups in
Casablanca, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and elsewhere.
The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means
won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished
more of its goals than the US has of its.
posted by Juan @ 9/11/2004 06:01:49 AM
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