You knew it was going to happen sooner or later with the 9/11 commission:
Another pissing match between the Liberals and Conservatives, the Democrats and the Republicans.
"9/11 happened because of Bill Clinton!"
"George W. Bush knew that 9/11 was going to happen!"
The truth is that both statements are in fact true. The one thing that I have noticed some conservatives imply is that this terrorism against the US is a new thing. That it's something that is only a sign of the '90s. That they cannot understand what the US might have done to provoke terrorism. They act as if the malice against the United States just started welling up during the prosperous '90s due to jealousy of the riches of the United States.
That quite simply is false. My question is, "Were any of you folks around during the 80's?"
I'm going to try to help separate some of the fact from fiction. I have created two web pages for your viewing.
Muslim/Arab Terrorist Attacks against Americans or American Interests 1980-1989. The immediate president before this time was Jimmy Carter.
During the four years that George Bush was president, there appears to be no Muslim/Arab terrorist attacks.
Muslim/Arab Terrorist Attacks against Americans or American Interests 1990-2001
This information I obtained from this website. I have changed a few of the casualty numbers which I believe were over inflated, excluded any attack that was not by Muslim/Arab interests or really unknown and added who was the president at the time.. There seems to be a more comprehensive "history of modern terrorism" on this site. Keep in mind, we are only focusing on terrorism that involves the US or its interests and are related to Muslim/Arab terrorist organizations. Keep in mind, there is a lot of terrorism that goes on in Central and South America, Africa, Western, Eastern Europe... basically the whole world. It's not uncommon at all.
Now that the facts have been presented with dates, let's move on to some "Armchair Analysis."
As can be seen from the links, terrorism against US targets is not a unique nor new phenomena. In fact, terrorism by Islamic/Arab groups was more common during the '80s. If anything, state sponsored terrorism is in decline replaced instead by mainly self-sufficient, independent organization who's funding comes from money laundered through donations laundered through charity, private wealth, or discreet hand outs by some governments in the world. Saudi Arabia comes to mind here. This is part of the reason why it makes it much harder to target and fight terrorism. By operating independently of government, terrorist organizations are better able to regroup and continue hitting targets long after the government has been overthrown or changed. To further complicate matters, there are more and more individual terrorist organizations spread all over the globe, working in complete anonymity and independently or each other. All of these factors together make the concept of being able to rout out terrorism with a few swift military victories a folly. We are not dealing with a military operation but more of a guerrilla, underworld, mob-like structure.
Article comments
1 - mike
There are the political structures that allow terrorism to flourish, and then there are the policing failures that allow specific events to happen.
9/11 had nothing to do with the former, and everything to do with the latter. It occurred not because of "root causes," but because the cops on the beat were incompetent. If Al Gore had been elected, 9/11 never would have happened. His team was more competent.
That's going to be the judgement of history.
2 - Ms. Tek
I think the truth is that it doesn't matter WHO is president. It's not about who is president of the United States but about the policies of the United States.
3 - mike
To some degree, but at the end of the day, it's the responsibility of the cop on the street to stop the robbery in progress. Al Gore would have been a better cop.
4 - Hal Pawluk
I found some info on world terrorism through 1994 and wanted to add it to the mix. Overall, world terrorism was on a downhill trend from 1987 through 1994.
I'll add info on the last ten years when/if I find it.
5 - JR
Don't forget the anarchist bombers of the 1890's. I think one of them assassinated the President in 1901.
6 - Rich Lyon
It's an interesting analysis and you touch on several very central points. I suspect, however, that your analysis of the problem down to US/Israel is simply too narrow. It fails to take into account the history of antipathy between East and West (the so called "clash of civilisations") that has stretched as far back as the Crusades and certainly before Israel's creation.
I find Orientalism a powerful concept for obtaining a deeper understanding of why we might be so hated. We are culturally predetermined to regard Arabs as irrational, menacing, untrustworthy, anti-Western and dishonest and it is the reaction to *that* that drives terrorism.
But there are more practical grounds for understanding why America is so hated - its dominance of Global finance, its multinational corporations, its selfish international policies based on doubtful notions of exceptionalism, its parasitic tendency to replace indigenous cultures with its own. It's not just the terrorists who are finding America's new conservative driven international agenda distinctly objectionable.
So ... what does America do if it finds that the poison it needs to kill the terrorists also requires it to fundamentally alter its perception of what it means to be "America"?
7 - Shark
Anybody remember Guy Fawkes, 1605? Caught on the grassy knoll with a boatload of gunpowder? Waiting for James I to drive by in his convertible carriage?
Terrorism has a long history, and time has only added additional degrees to the possibility of destruction. A bag of gunpowder vs a Boeing aircraft, nation-wide anthrax mailing, or a 'dirty bomb'. (Ah, the wonders of technology!)
RE: Why They Hate Us -
Arab countries consider the United States as a continuation of earlier colonial powers: Great Britain, France and Russia.
The Industrial Revolution allowed Western powers the ability to colonize, marginalize, and exploit the Islamic world from the 18th century on.
And those people have LONG memories.
8 - Shark
PS: We read self-help books or get psychological treatments to increase our 'self-esteem'.
They blow shit up.
What we really need is an Arab version of that Tony Robbins guy.
9 - Eric Olsen
Rich, I couldn't disagree much more about the relevance of Orientalism, which simply blames the Islamic world's problems on us and makes the astonishing claim that our attitudes toward them have somehow generated pathological behaviors there, rather than seeing the rather large elephant in the room that the pathological behaviors that have generated our attitudes. This is absurd, and many Arab/Islamic intellectuals now realize that scapegoating the West for their own problems is not helpful or honest.
And regarding "doubtful notions of excpetionalism" - mother of God! - who has more pronounced and irrational notions of exceptionalism than Islamists? The Islamist sense of entitlement and exceptionalism fully qualifies as insane.
10 - Ms. Tek
Rich, I think what your saying also, almost makes it a "inherited" behavior kind of thing. As if these people are pre-programed to behave this way, no matter what the current situation is because of mistakes in the pass. I don't think that any human nor any culture is pre-programed by history. One can be aware of history and should be, but this does not mean that someone should logically act on something that happened 800 years ago.
The point about colonialism is true, in my opinion. The fundamentalist in the Middle east do think that the Modern West is destroying their culture and a threat to their very morality. I honestly believe that if the US were to pull all troops out of the region and stop it's unabashed support of Israel, you'd be hard pressed to find as many calls for Jihad on the United States. Part of the reason being is that they would be so busy fighting each other and recking their part of the world up, they wouldn't have the time to have attacks against the US or any other western country.
The thing is that Israel isn't going to go anywhere and I accept that. So the United States needs to take a different methodology to counteract these groups. As I stated before, this isn't the same as dealing with a rouge country or military operation. I had someone comment to me in another blog that "Kill the queen bee and the hive will die". The problem with this is that there really is not central government nor person responsible for terrorism. If anything, the "queen bee" is islam and arab culture itself. If you truly expect the violence to stop dead cold, you're going to have to commit genocide on each an every Islamic arab in the Middle east and some parts of Asia.
I saw the footage yesterday of the Sunni's who dragged the four civilians in the street and hung them from bridges. These were other human beings that did this. Apparently, no one tried to stop them. I admit after seeing that, the thought came through my head "nuke the whole goddamn place. They don't get it and they don't deserve the help". Then I thought about the talks the Arab league had before the invasion of Iraq where things got out of hand because the Iraqi diplomat insulted the Kuwaiti's mustache (or maybe it was the other way around). Talks broke down because of this. Could you imagine something like this between talks with Tony Blair and George Bush going on like that?
The truth is that in order to deal with these people, you need to do it from the inside out. Bombs are not going to get them to knock it off, solders giving kids candy as they get blown up by one of the children is not going to knock it off. They're going to have to knock it off themselves and the only way that is going to happen is with some sort of internal revolution. No other way.