Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: The Jerusalem Post
Date: October 3, 2001
URL: http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/10/03/Opinion/Opinion.35589.html
All four of the plane crashes on
September 11 occurred in the northeastern United States, where I live.
According to the latest Newsweek poll, a massive two-thirds of my neighbors
feel "less safe" than they did before that day.
I beg to disagree. This particular
American now feels more secure. The reason? Those terrible events alerted
my fellow citizens to the fact that militant Islam is engaged in fighting
a war on the United States.
That war began, not as people seem
to think, in September 2001 but in February 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini
took power in Iran. Already by November 1979, Khomeini had seized the US
Embassy in Teheran and held nearly 60 captives for 444 days. Eight American
soldiers (the first casualties in this war) died in the failed US rescue
attempt in 1980.
The Islamists' initial major act
of violence against Americans, killing 63, took place in 1983 when they
attacked the US Embassy in Beirut. As the analyst David Makovsky notes,
Washington "beat a hasty exit, and Islamic militants saw this as a vindication
that suicide bombing was... deadly effective." Then followed a rapid sequence
of attacks on Americans in Lebanon (the embassy a second time, a Marine
barracks, airline passengers, university presidents), plus other Middle
Eastern countries.
This assault persisted for the next
18 years. Prominent targets included American soldiers in Saudi Arabia
(twice), two embassies in East Africa, and a warship in Yemen. Further
afield, Islamists killed Americans in Israel, Pakistan, Kashmir, and the
Philippines.
Attacks on US soil began with the
1980 murder of an anti-Khomeini Iranian resident in the Washington, DC
area. Subsequent killings included a Muslim religious figure in Tucson,
Arizona, a Jewish leader in New York City, and CIA employees waiting in
their cars to enter the agency headquarters. A rash of murders took place
at New York landmarks - the World Trade Center, the Brooklyn Bridge, the
Empire State Building.
Washington threatened retribution
("You can run but you can't hide") for attacks against Americans, but hardly
ever carried through. Rather, the preferred US response was to hunker down
behind concrete barriers, thick walls, and security checks. Intelligence
and defense capabilities remained inadequate. Actual perpetrators were
sometimes caught and tried in court, but the apparatus that trained and
dispatched them remained unscathed.
The sad fact is, 22 years and 600
dead did not get the country's attention. Americans blithely ignored those
specialists on militant Islam and terrorism who pleaded for vigilance and
warned of horrors to come. This national obliviousness explains how Americans
found themselves so embarrassingly unprepared for the events of September
11. "Scandal" is how one Israeli pilot correctly describes the military's
inability to protect the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.
Nearly 7,000 deaths in one day did,
at least, finally awake the country.
And I feel safer now, as the FBI
is engaged in the largest operation in its history, armed marshals will
again be flying on US aircraft, and the immigration service has placed
foreign students under increased scrutiny. I feel safer when Islamist organizations
are exposed, illicit money channels closed down, and immigration regulations
reviewed. The amassing of American forces near Iraq and Afghanistan cheers
me. The newfound alarm is healthy, the sense of solidarity heartening,
the resolve is encouraging.
But will it last? Are Americans
truly ready to sacrifice liberties and lives to prosecute seriously the
war against militant Islam? I worry about US constancy and purpose.
One thing is very sure: should the
thousands of deaths of fellow citizens not inspire Americans to extirpate
the threat of militant Islam, then this will be back, and more dangerous
next time. September's carnage was limited to the destruction of things
crashing into each other, but future Islamist attacks are likely to involve
weapons of mass destruction. Should that happen, the death toll could be
in the millions, not the thousands.
So, let this warning be clear: Militant
Islam seeks to destroy the United States (as well as Europe, Israel, and
many other societies) as presently constituted. Islamists have shown resolve,
tenacity, and tactical brilliance. Unless Westerners take this threat very
much to heart, Islamists will be back, dispensing far worse punishments.
