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Jewish World Review Oct. 4, 2001 / 17 Tishrei, 5762
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http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
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 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 seized the U.S.
embassy in Tehran and held nearly 60 captives for 444 days. Eight American soldiers (the first
casualties in this war) died in the failed U.S. rescue attempt in 1980.
The Islamists' initial major act of violence against Americans, killing sixty-three, took place
in 1983 when they attacked the U.S. embassy in Lebanon. As the analyst David Makovsky notes,
the 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 eighteen years. Prominent targets included American
soldiers in Saudi Arabia (twice), two embassies in East Africa, and a warship in Yemen.
Further a field, Islamists killed Americans in Israel, Pakistan, Kashmir, and the Philippines.
Attacks on U.S. soil began with the 1980 murder of an anti-Khomeini Iranian resident in the
Washington, D.C. 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 U.S. 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, twenty-two years and a six hundred 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. The population was feckless, distracted, and
complacent, the government incompetent. 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 seven thousand 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 U.S. 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 new-found alarm is healthy, the sense
of solidarity heartening, the resolve is encouraging.
But will it last? Will this long-drowsy people not be tempted to go back to sleep when today's
acute sense of danger and unity dissipates? Are Americans truly ready to sacrifice liberties
and lives to prosecute seriously the war against militant Islam? I worry about U.S. constancy
and purpose.
One thing is very sure: should the thousands of deaths of fellow citizens not inspire
Americans to extirpate the th
reat 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 to heart,
Islamists will be back, dispensing far worse
By Daniel Pipes
JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from. Comment by clicking here.
