September 11 and Its Aftermath: a strategic analysis

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Barry Ritholtz <ritholtz () optonline net>
Date: September 12, 2004 7:02:46 AM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
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 () maximgrp com
(212) 895-3614
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Picture:  A blog of capital markets, geopolitics, with a dash  
of music and film!
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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  

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/