Putting Islamic Terrorism In Perspective

Marc Sageman tried valiantly this week to get folks thinking rationally about terrorism, but the fearmongers and muslim haters just cannot help themselves. They must believe that every Muslim is hellbent on killing Christians and conquering the west. Marc, for those who don’t know him, was a NOC at the CIA and worked in Afghanistan when the Soviets were running amuck. Unlike the vast majority of so-called terrorist experts, Marc has actually faced death threats and has interviewed dozens of real terrorists.

Marc has written a new book. Leaderless Jihad. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius commented on the book earlier this week, writing:

The heart of Sageman’s message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat — and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain’s Web site puts it, the United States is facing “a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists” spawned by al-Qaeda.

The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a “clash of civilizations.”

It’s the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman’s account, it’s a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls “terrorist wannabes.” Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills.

This is not just Marc’s opinion. He actually has research and facts to buttress his position. But leave it to the neocons and rightwing crazies to twist his words and conclusions. Max Boot, for example, reacted to Sageman by blaming me:

It was one of the least prescient articles ever written. The headline was “The Declining Terrorist Threat” and it appeared in the New York Times on July 10, 2001. Its author, Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism specialist, set out to confront what he regarded as fearmongering and mythmaking:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

“None of these beliefs are based in fact,” he assured readers, going on to marshal a host of statistics on the decline in terrorism.

In hindsight, of course, it was obvious there were a few problems with his analysis. Just because some incidents of terrorism were in decline did not mean that there could not be an increase in the future. The trend in the number of terrorist attacks was irrelevant in any case if just one of those attacks could cause casualties on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

Yep. I am to blame. I will repeat for the umpteenth time. The July op-ed did not suggest nor imply we should ignore Bin Laden and his band. In fact, Milt Bearden and I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in November of 2000 (seems like ages ago) that observed:

The Clinton Administration has shot its bolt on the terrorist problem with small effect, and no last minute show of force will change the record. A new administration can start afresh with a more sharply defined set of terrorism goals – Mughniyeh and bin Laden and their protectors for starters – and bring the full, coordinated force of American diplomatic, military, and intelligence capabilities to bear on the problem.

Unfortunately, almost seven years since the attacks of 9-11 and President Bush and the Congress still have not gotten behind a fully coordinated, targeted policy to dismantle the last remnants of the Bin Laden terrorist network. We are spending enormous sums of money and keeping legions of contractors employed. CIA continues to work independently in many cases of military special operations forces. And DEA, who scored a major arrest today of arms merchant to terrorists, Victor Bout, is rarely consulted on terrorism issues.

And misinformed pundits like Boot apparently want to keep it that way. I realize it is a nifty story line to blame me for 9-11 and the failures to take out Bin Laden before the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, but it is not true. Rather than have an honest, informed discussion about the actual acts of violence, the demonstrated capabilities, the sources of funding, and the training regimens the neocons want to whip up the public fear and just throw money at a problem. Let’s hope that folks read Sageman’s latest work and realize he is helping chart a course correction for our nation’s counter terrorism policy based in part on smart thinking and a targeted use of public resources.