Time has a good (but frustrating) summary of Al Qaeda’s intent behind its terrorist attacks and how the outcomes have played out. I say frustrating because it highlights the key points that security analysts and global counter-terrorism experts have said since the begging, but were lost in political rhetoric and not fully realized by policy makers.
The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was not simply to kill Americans; they formed part of bin Laden’s strategy to launch a global Islamist revolution aimed at ending U.S. influence in Muslim countries, overthrowing regimes there allied with Washington, and putting al-Qaeda at the head of a global Islamist insurgency whose objective was to restore the rule of the Islamic Caliphate that had once ruled territory stretching from Moorish Spain through much of Asia.
It was never about us or that they hated our freedoms, they were just trying to get us out of the region.
Sure, al-Qaeda continues to issue vituperative missives by video from its hideouts, many of them directed at the likes of Iran and Hamas…
Even among those who share much of Bin Laden’s animus to the U.S. and Israel, al-Qaeda has remained largely irrelevant, its strategy of global jihad rejected in favor of an Islamist radicalism focused on more limited national goals.
Iran and Hezbollah have always been fundamental enemies to Al Qaeda since they are Shia, who to radical Sunnis are apostates worse than Christians or Jews. Any interaction between the two would be limited and more like Hitler/Stalin than Hitler/Hirohito/Mussolini. On the other hand, Hamas, Sunni fighters in Iraq and a myriad of other Islamist groups throughout the globe (primarily SE Asia) have very localized aims that merely took advantage of Al Qaeda resources but had no qualms about giving them the shove when public opinion turned. To be fair, Al Qaeda anticipated that it would primarily work with these loosely aligned terrorist organizations that didn’t share their main goals but were galvanized by uprising — indeed the Al Qaeda means The Foundation to reflect this — however they underestimated how people would react to mindless killing and some of the local commanders proved to be sadistic fools. It turns out that even radials don’t approve of random targeting of (non-Israeli) civilians.
In areas with a rule of law, this meant that Al Qaeda operatives were turned in by the local populace and rounded up primarily by local security forces.
The flaw in bin Laden’s strategy of trying to capture the imagination of the Muslim masses through spectacular acts of terror was obvious even in the immediate wake of 9/11. In much of the Arab and Muslim world, there was a pervasive refusal to believe that Muslims had been responsible for the attacks, even after bin Laden claimed responsibility. The denial inherent in the tendency common from Egypt to Indonesia to blame the Mossad or the CIA for 9/11 reveal a damning negation of al-Qaeda’s tactics – so repulsive was the mass murder of innocents to ordinary Muslims that most refused to celebrate the attacks, as bin Laden had hoped they might, but instead sought to blame them on those deemed enemies of Islam.
Even in countries where al-Qaeda had hoped to capitalize on resentment against American influence, its networks were largely rolled up by security services as the population looked on, indifferent. By invading Iraq, the Bush Administration arguably did a far more effective job than bin Laden had of weakening U.S. influence in the Muslim world and rallying its youth to resistance. Yet, even in Iraq, al-Qaeda’s effort to gain control of the resistance failed because its ideology and tactics were so loathsome even to the bulk of the Sunni insurgents fighting the Americans that they eventually made common cause with the U.S. against the jihadists.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia are the sole remaining strongholds due to their lack of rule of law and the fact that Al Qaeda hasn’t been stupid enough to attack the local populace there like they did in Jordan and Iraq. Even in Afghanistan:
Similarly, in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s erstwhile stomping ground, the fight against the U.S. is being waged by the Taliban, which may have been an ally of al-Qaeda but exists entirely independently of bin Laden’s movement and will ultimately make its strategic decisions based on its own, national interests. The sobering reality for bin Laden is that even among those dedicated to resisting the U.S. and its allies, his ideology of global jihad against the “far enemy” (the United States) has failed to supplant the more pragmatic Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hizballah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, all of whom limit themselves to clearly defined national objectives, eliciting increasingly manic denunciations from al-Qaeda’s cave-dwellers.
This summary is nearly verbatim what many principled opponents of the Iraq War and GWOT said all along. It’s what international experts have been trying to tell policy leaders only to be ignored. The ignorance has led to hundreds of thousands of people being killed, trillions of dollars wasted, the decline of Constitutional values and a terrible decrease in international cooperation.
There are a lot of exhortations to “reflect” and “remember” this day, but it’s unclear what that means. The fact is that what looked like the 21st century’s (hopefully only) Pearl Harbor has turned out to be closer to Oklahoma City: murderous egomaniacs that tried to bring about a new world by tricking us into destroying our old one. We nearly did. But beyond that, I see little meaning.
And in a way, perhaps that is how 9/11 will eventually be remembered. America always prides itself as being a country of destiny and views individual battles as part of a Great Struggle, be it the colonization of the untamed west, the fight for political systems that will determine the very fabric of our country or the heroic sacrifices against the combined hordes of crazed destruction. While you can argue about the accuracy or morality of those narratives, for the most part they were true, with Vietnam being the most notable exception. Still, even there we didn’t see the violence come to our doorstep.
We tried to give 9/11 that meaning but it has unraveled, and I don’t think that we fully appreciate our unique place among nations to have that privilege of metanarratives. For much of the world, conflict is the inevitable outcome of pettiness, resources and historical animosity; they have no great meaning, just survival. I know many Kosovars that saw their towns, families and friends systematically destroyed. One is only alive because he is a Christian*. To the left: dead. To the right: dead. He has a cross: alive. I was very surprised that they had no great message. There was no “never again” for it was just the latest round in a long standing animosity. There were no heroes and no villains. To them it happened, they got lucky and others didn’t.
An Israeli woman was visiting while her hometown of Haifa was being bombarded by Hezbollah. “We just want the rockets to stop.” That is all.
So for me, I view this day as a time to remember and empathize. For the soldiers, for the firefighters and police, for the victims, for the families. I can’t grieve because I’ve been fortunate enough to not have any close friends or relatives have their number called, but I have been there for some that have had others that did. I don’t think 9/11 really had any meaning and without meaning, it’s just life. In another thread, the commenter RememberNovember linked to a personal recollection and concluded:
I for one am glad I was lucky enough to make it through that day and thank whatever angels and spirits that watched over me and us. What I took from that day is that even when things are at their lowest, humanity still has the capacity to band together for the common good-regardless of what the circumstances or fault lies. Give your wives/girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/significant others extra hugs today. Be glad to be alive. That’s more important than lipstick on pigs and bridges to nowhere.
* I should point out that he is an ethnic Albanian and convert. So the majority of his family and friends would have not been so “lucky” at the hands of the Serbs.