Dale K. Robinson
August 23, 2006
There are those who believe that if US forces were withdrawn from Iraq, attacks on US interests at home and abroad would cease. There are those who believe that if the US ceased to support Israel, the threat from Islamic radicals would just go away.
It’s a nice fantasy. Usama bin Laden himself has said that the jihad against the United States is “a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian Peninsula. … Jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian Peninsula, but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.”
Bin Laden spoke those words to CNN reporter Peter Arnett during a March 20, 1997 interview, more than four years before his terrorists brought down the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people.
“Desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.” What does that mean? Pretty much whatever bin Laden wants it to mean, of course. It’s a pretty broad statement. But think about it. It could mean a nuclear Iran, the destruction of Israel, Taliban-style governments and Sharia law in predominantly Muslim nations across the world, an Islamic empire stretching from Indonesia to Spain. “Aggressive intervention against Muslims” could be considered anything – prosecuting a Muslim father for the “honor killing” of a daughter romantically involved with a non-Muslim, arresting Muslim rioters protesting cartoons of Mohammed, intervening against Muslims killing non-Muslims in Chechnya, Lebanon, the Sudan, Somalia, or anywhere in the world.
The rest of the interview was enlightening, as well. “The hearts of Muslims are filled with hatred towards the United States,” Usama bin Laden told Peter Arnett. I don’t believe that to be true of all Muslims; I don’t believe that to be true of most Muslims. But it is true of Islamic extremists like bin Laden.
“We declared jihad against the US government because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of [Palestine],” he told Arnett. He added “ … The American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places …” And it becomes easy to see why bin Laden could target American citizens on American soil on September 11, 2001.
He expressed his disdain for American military power and US resolve as well. Commenting on the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, bin Laden said, “The American troops left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming they were the largest power on earth. They left after some resistance from powerless, poor, unarmed people whose only weapon is the belief in Allah … We learned from those who fought there, that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters… The Americans ran away from those who fought and killed them … If the US still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia , then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return.”
In Beirut, 241 American troops died when a suicide bomber crashed an explosives laden truck into the US Marine barracks in 1983. In 1992, al Qaeda bombed a hotel in Aden, Yemen where US servicemen were known to stay. Two Australian tourists died. Eighteen American troops died during the Battle of Mogadishu, which was the subject of the film “Black Hawk Down.”
Bin Laden has reason to mock US resolve – public opinion defeated America in Vietnam; we let Iran hold 53 Americans hostage for 444 days in 1979-1981 with only a badly bungled rescue attempt in response. In what is widely viewed as the first battle in what we now call the War on Terror, the Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, we reacted by withdrawing our troops. After the Battle of Mogadishu, we left Somalia. Khobar Towers, embassy bombings in Africa, the USS Cole – our response was either none at all or worse, ineffectual.
Bin Laden believes American resolve is weak, but we almost proved him wrong. In the months following the 9-11 attacks, Americans were ready to fight. We took the fight to him. And we quickly took down the Taliban and their al Qaeda backers in Afghanistan. That was just the easy part.
When the US decided it was time to act against Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the UN resolutions ordering Iraq to cooperate with UN inspections, much of the nation was behind that decision. And when we went up against the Iraqi military, we quickly took them down as well. Again, that was the easy part.
Americans like their victories to be fast, and to be bloodless like Operations Just Cause in 1989 and Desert Storm in 1991, where 23 and 147 Americans died respectively. Perhaps not entirely bloodless, but these “victories” were certainly fast.
War is usually neither fast nor bloodless, however, as history proves over and over. Today, more than 2600 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today’s Americans can’t stomach the deaths of their sons and daughters in combat on foreign soil. And our resolve is weak. Our enemies, Usama bin Laden, the insurgents in Iraq, the Iranians, even the North Koreans, all know this. They listen to the grumbles of the Kerrys and Kennedys and Sheehans and Murthas; they follow the media reports. They are waiting for our resolve to weaken to the breaking point, for us to run for home like a dog with its tail between its legs. They are waiting for us to blink. Like we have done so many times in the last few decades.
We can not afford to blink; we can not afford to weaken. Our enemies are waiting to pounce. In 2001, bin Laden brought the fight to our soil. And we took the fight back to him. Today, his al Qaeda fighters and their Islamofascist brothers stir violence between sects in Iraq, try to destabilize the fledgling governments in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. They kill hundreds of Muslims every day. And they kill American troops as they chip away at our resolve. Will we blink again like we did in Beirut and Mogadishu?
Usama is counting on it.