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 unreal. First of all, arguing that we aren't in a clash of civilizations is ridiculous. He is refuting a claim that seems mostly made by anti-war types as an excuse to oppose the war. That the president continuously goes out of his way to argue that Islam is a "religion of peace" and the inconvenient fact that we only seem to be waging war on jihadi Moslems or states only incidentally Moslem (Iraq) would seem to indicate that knocking down this straw man is pointless.
The fundamental clash of civilizations is taking place within Islam between the extremists and the majority of Moslems who aren't gearing up for jihad. September 11 gave us an interest in intervening in that war since the jihadis seemed to like to inspire the great mass of Moslems with attacks on us. With nukes, chemicals, and bugs potential future weapons instead of boxcutters and plane tickets, we couldn't stand aside as we had for decades while the intra-Islamic civil war played out.
And as polling has shown, since we have fought the war in Iraq, it is the sight of Moslem jihadis killing other Moslems that has outraged the Moslem world. Moslems have rejected both bin Laden and terrorism by significant majorities, when prior to the war they supported both.
Did Moslems flock to Iraq to fight? Yes they did. They flocked to Afghanistan in the 1990s in at least those numbers and even travelled to Iraq in the years prior to the war at the invitation of Saddam to become his so-called Fedayeen. And if we hadn't invaded Iraq, rest assured that al Qaeda would have sent their jihadis somewhere else. After all, they still hold a grudge over their Afghanistan pasting and don't share our Left's argument that only Afghanistan is the good war. And we would have had to help whoever was attacked and then jihadi-friendly types would have been outraged over that fight. Plus we would have had Saddam still in power.
And remember in regard to Iraq following our liberation, that if not for the help of Syria and the prodding of Arab states who liked the idea of their jihadis being killed in Iraq by American forces rather than posing a threat at home, the anger at the overthrow of Saddam would have been irrelevant to our poisition in Iraq after we liberated Iraq.
In many ways, this flow of recruits to Iraq is normal for any war. As any war goes on for years, both sides mobilize their resources to wage war on a grander scale and more intensely. In our war against al Qaeda, the same trend has occurred. They invade Iraq. Then we fight them and train Iraqis. Then the jihadis ally with the Baathists and Sadrists. Then we go on offense with existing troop levels. Then the jihadis attempt to spark a civil war by escalating suicide bombings. We add more expensive weapons and equipment. Then we surge our forces and also build up the Iraqi security forces even more. We even expand our ground forces in general to help cope with increased demand for troops.
But eventually, as we've both added resources, our victories in Iraq have discouraged Moslems from jihad and the vicious nature of the jihadi attacks on innocent Moslem civilians reminded the non-jihadis of the price of that jihad.
If we hadn't compelled the Moslem world to see what the jihadis were capable of doing to other Moslems by fighting the jihadis in Iraq after liberating Iraq, those al Qaeda terrorists could have rebuilt their network from inside Pakistan where we have not dared to tread too obviously. The sympathetic Moslem world would have regenerated these guys who are now considered dangerous but devastated.
Besides, we had many reasons to destroy Saddam's regime even separate from the war on jihadi terrorists. He was a threat to the stability of the region and was our declared enemy. Regime change in Iraq was our official policy, enacted by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Only because al Qaeda invaded Iraq has it been possible to forget that before Iraq became al Qaeda's central front, secular Iraq was our enemy. And a brutal dictator to top off the reasons to destroy his Baathist regime.
Further, Sageman neglect the reason why the first and second generations of al Qaeda leaders are decimated. We killed them by waging war against them. And because they are dead or on the run, they aren't as much of a threat. And that amorphous third generation will just be griping losers venting on the Internet as long as supporting states like Iraq are gone from the scene. Without state support, these guys are law enforcement and intelligence agency problems. And burdens on a welfare system, of course.
Ultimately, minimizing the threat these jihadis pose to us seems to imply that we should just act like sophisticated Europeans and accept a certain amount of deaths each year from jihadi terrorism without responding actively. We should just let the fury burn its way out and make sad faces at every subway bombing or kidnapping and beheading. And hope that the wave of jihad burns out before some terrorist group gets a nuke or dirty bomb.
Of course, even if we did that successfully, avoiding a WMD attack in the process, without addressing the clash of civilization within Islam we'd guarantee another wave of jihadis some time in the future and there would be Moslem states willing to point them at the West to save themselves from jihadi fury. And after another few decades of scientific progress, what nasty devices would these new jihadis have access to?
A threat doesn't have to be existential to be bloody and demoralizing. What kind of restrictions on our civil liberties would we have to accept to passively resist jihadi terrorism? Remember that keeping the jihadis from being an existential threat assumes we are resolute in resisting that threat. Let me know in a decade how Europe is doing with that, will you?
I get depressed every time a former CIA analyst writes a book. They are truly clueless. I hope they aren't representative of all our intelligence agents. I sure hope that Sageman isn't.
