Reviews of Books
"I was further impressed that he understood the significance of homeland security in the same sense that we at HSToday understand it: "As primitive as it is, the concept of `homeland security' means even more than what any bureaucracy can do. The American people have been mobilized, even if to only recognize a concept," he writes
Homeland Security Today
www.HSToday.us
JIHAD NATURE AND THE FUTURE
Editor's Letter David Silversberg
June 2006
THIS BEING JUNE, THE START OF THE HURRICANE SEASON, AND THIS BEING OUR HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS ISSUE, THE SUBJECT OF THIS LETTER SHOULD BE ABOUT THE DANGERS OF NATURE RUN AMOK.
However, I'm driven to write about a different hazard-terrorism-because I've just finished a remarkable book: Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America, by Walid Phares.
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001 I've been trying to understand the Jihadists who carried out the attacks. What were they thinking? What did they expect to accomplish? What do they hope to achieve in the future? And once we answer those questions we'll be able to answer the next big questions: What can we expect? What must we do?
Like most Americans I'm hampered by the fact that I can't speak, read or understand Arabic. I'd tried to read whatever literature I could find that might answer my questions. One very good book that appeared shortly after the attacks was Through Our Enemies Eyes by Michael Scheuer, who had led the CIA's bin Laden unit.
But though I read that book and others as well as websites, articles and other writings, I still didn't feel that I understood bin Laden, 9/11 or the jihad movement-until I picked up Future Jihad.
Phares, currently a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is of Lebanese extraction and brings to bear the great advantage of having grown up in Middle Eastern culture. He understands its underlying assumptions, linguistic subtleties, roots and history. Further, he spent his life studying the jihad movement. He distilled that lifetime of experience and study into his book. He has provided a singular service in deciphering and interpreting this movement and culture to civilized readers.
I was further impressed that he understood the significance of homeland security in the same sense that we at HSToday understand it: "As primitive as it is, the concept of `homeland security' means even more than what any bureaucracy can do. The American people have been mobilized, even if to only recognize a concept," he writes.
THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
I can't summarize the entire book into this small space but let me distill some points that at least answer my original questions.
Osama bin Laden and the jihadist movement are seeking to establish a "caliphate," a united body of believers with a single leader (caliph)-this much is widely known to the western public. With the great attacks of 9/11 they hoped to throw American society into chaos, provoke an American overreaction that would unite the
Muslim world into a single body against the rest of the unbelieving world (the Dar al Harb) and in so doing enable the establishment of the caliphate.
As Phares points out, Osama bin Laden intended that he would be the caliph of this new polity. The 9/11 attacks and their devastation were the result of one man's megalomaniacal ambition.
Knowing that Osama bin Laden was trained as an engineer, one can see him following an engineer's critical path to his goal: To become caliph, he needed to establish the caliphate. What stood in the way were the two great superpowers. He viewed himself as having defeated the Soviet Union, next he had to defeat the United States. He assumed he could use terror the way a stonemason might use a chisel: A sharp blow in the right spot can cause a stone to fracture along its natural fault lines. The art is in determining the fault lines and placing the blow in precisely the right spot. Hence, 9/11. It is all very logical and direct as long as one can grasp the underlying cultural and historical assumptions-an insight that Phares provides.
So what can we expect in the future? Here, I offer my own thought: Whether bin Laden is in hiding or dead, others will aspire to be caliph. In a movement without a hierarchy or an established means of succession it's only through spectacular acts of terror that the candidates can establish their qualifications. This will be the driver of future jihad and it's what homeland security and the global war on terror must prevent.
So the threat of terrorism is still with us and now Nature's dangers loom. Homeland security has a big task ahead of it HST
© Copyright 2003-2018 by walidphares.com
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