The New Master Narrative

For years there's been a conflict between those who would frame our current situation as a "war" and those who would frame it as something less. I've written many times about efforts in the media to downplay the threat posed by global terrorism, and the way the media seeks to avoid the war frame.

Yesterday, however, via Memeorandum, I found a Newsweek piece that went further than any I've seen from a major publication, explicitly arguing that we ourselves created the idea of a threat from al Queda, that it's all a myth, that they're the gang that couldn't bomb straight.

I'm not inclined to believe a writer who either doesn't have basic facts straight or is shading them from the beginning:

According to Uthman, al-Libi was a small-time member of a broader movement of jihadists who—inspired by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian killed during the CIA-backed mujahedin fight against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—came to fight the Soviets in the 1980s and later, trained, to redirect jihad back to their home regimes.

Azzam was bin Ladin's mentor. The two of them created al Queda together, but they fought over the direction the movement should take (and the way the money should be spent) once the Soviets were defeated. He -- and two of his sons -- were killed after Friday prayers one day when, much like a Mafia don, his car exploded upon ignition. Which suddenly, what do you know, left OBL in charge. Suspicions have swirled for years, but there's never been any proof and OBL has never had anything but praise for his teacher.

I'd give a link for this, but you can find this story in any book that provides a history of al Queda. Saying Azzam died "during the fight" is a small inaccuracy and probably irrelevant for a story of this nature, but no one who's done serious reading about al Queda would make that mistake.

So why am I going to believe the rest of what this man has to say?

In an effort to minimize the threat posed by al Queda, the author writes this:

Some U.S. officials are disputing Suskind's account. But it is true that the more we learn about Al Qaeda, the more we have to conclude that the group contained a lot more Abu Zubaydah types than it did Muhammad Attas. In contrast to the truly terrifying Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, and 9/11 master strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—both of whom took terrorism to new levels of competence—most Al Qaeda operatives look more like life's losers, the kind who in a Western culture would join street gangs or become a petty criminals but who in the jihadi world could lose themselves in a "great cause," making some sense of their pinched, useless lives. Like Richard Reid, who tried to set his shoelace on fire. Or Ahmed Ressam, who bolted in a panic from his car at the U.S. border during an alleged mission to bomb the L.A. airport. Or Iyman Faris, who comically believed he could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Or the crazed Zacarias Moussaoui, who was disowned even by bin Laden. Then you've got the hapless Lackawanna Six, and, more recently, the Toronto 17, who were thinking about pulling off an Oklahoma City-style attack with ammonium nitrate—or perhaps just beheading the prime minister—but hadn't quite gotten around to it.

That's borderline dishonest.

Yes, Richard Reid was a bit of a loser, and thank God he was obvious enough in his efforts to "set his shoelaces on fire" that other passengers noticed. But Hirsch conveniently forgets to mention that those shoes were laced with an extremely unstable explosive. It's a good thing he didn't stamp his feet instead of trying to light them on fire. As for Iyman Faris, he knew damn well a blow torch wouldn't take down the Brooklyn Bridge: he was the one who told al Queda that. He was a danger because he was an American citizen with potential access to a variety of other targets and as an al Queda member viewed them as targets. Yes, we all know Moussaui was off his rocker and the Lackawanna Six never got it together. But there were thousands, thousands who went through those camps in Afghanistan.

What are they up to?

By the way, the Toronto 17 were not a part of al Queda. They are part of a new and different phenomenon, and if you aren't worried about home grown terrorism you just aren't paying attention. In any event to say that they "just hadn't gotten around to" their attack is an absurdity. They didn't launch an attack because they weren't given the chance -- the Mounties got to them first. What's the argument, that if the Canadians had allowed them to have the fertilizer all would still be well up north because they're really slacker terrorists?

And this is a columnist in a serious publication?

He then writes:

Were these people potentially lethal? Yes. One doesn't have to graduate at the top of one's class to set off explosives in a satchel on a subway. Were most of them capable of hatching a minutely timed scheme to obtain and detonate a nuclear bomb in a city, or launch a biowarfare attack? No.

Guess what: Oklahoma City wasn't nuclear, and these guys were on their way to something three times that size. Part of the attraction of suicide bombs is you don't need a highly trained bomber to pull the trigger, only a highly motivated one. The Madrid bombing in any event was fairly carefully timed, and those guys weren't especially highly trained -- they don't need to come at us with their best to present a deadly threat.

He writes:

Especially in the immediate wake of the horrific but brilliantly coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it seemed absurdly risky—if not downright unpatriotic—to suggest that perhaps Muhammad Atta was the best bin Laden had, his Hail Mary pass, so to speak.

But there was substantial evidence showing that, up to 9/11, Al Qaeda could barely hold its act together, that it was a failing group, hounded from every country it tried to roost in (except for the equally lunatic Taliban-run Afghanistan). That it didn't represent the mainstream view even in the jihadi community, much less the rest of the Muslim world. This is the reality of the group that the Bush administration has said would engage us in a "long war" not unlike the cold war—the group that has led to the transformation of U.S. foreign policy and America's image in the world. The intelligence community generally agrees that the number of true A-list Al Qaeda operatives out there around the time of 9/11 was no more than about 1,000, perhaps as few as 500, most in and around Afghanistan.

I'm sure Atta was the very best they had. That doesn't mean there weren't others out there who were very, very dangerous. And the fact that al Queda wasn't "mainstream" is irrelevant if it had tens of thousands of sympathizers and thousands of recruits. (By the way, al Queda left Afghanistan/Pakistan because bin Laden had had it with the Afghans inability to stop fighting after the Soviets were evicted. They left voluntarily. They were asked to leave the Sudan. From there they returned to Afghanistan, were they remained until 9/11.)

At the end of the day he's massively underplaying the threat here, it seems to me. It comes down to which sources you find most credible. A journalist, or the major authorities in the field. (He concludes with an argument about how Iraq has been a mistake, but that's a different argument entirely.)

I'm not an expert, but I know who I find credible. We had Rohan Gunaratna here for a conference. I find the man incredibly impressive. He's no fan of the administration, thinks the war in Iraq was a mistake. But he's a leading expert on al Queda, if not the expert, has advised various governments and in that capacity has had the opportunity to interview a number of detained terrorists, and he's pretty sure al Queda is real, has always been real, and continues to be a threat. Benjamin and Simon aren't academics, but they were leading experts in the Clinton administration, have continued to study terrorism, (are no friends of this administration), and they've never had a doubt that al Queda is real. Walter Lacquer has never doubted the threat posed by Islamist terrorism (keeping in mind this might be broader than al Queda.)

Hirsh never addresses or contests the fact that even if there are only 500 to 1,000 in the inner circle, thousands went through the camps. Because, of course, what he completely ignores are the affiliate groups, for example JI in Southeast Asia, or the fact that, while he can mock the Canadians, the home grown threat is where al Queda is evolving, as it becomes a movement rather than a group. The anniversary of the London subway bombings is coming up: that should have been a message to us all. An overemphasis on the original roster is a mistake. This is an ideology, and the fact that it isn't "mainstream" doesn't tell us much either.

It may well be the case that the administration thought (or spun) al Queda prime as a more lethal threat than it was: there were plenty of representations of them as "ten feet tall" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. But swinging the pendulum the other way, and arguing that they were not then, and are not now, a real threat, strikes me as not just wrong -- but dangerous.

But at least the argument is out in the open.

Update: Look at the way the Times represents those arrested in Miami at the start of this article:

The seven men who were arrested here last week on terror charges were shown Friday on undercover videotapes solemnly reciting oaths of loyalty to Al Qaeda, repeating the words that an F.B.I. informant had given them to say.

The impression left, of course, is that they were mere puppets of the government informant, and doing his bidding, but if he was playing the role of their al Queda contact in order to prevent them from seeking out a genuine al Queda member, he would have had to come up with something to keep them happy if they were insisting on taking the oath of "bayat," or loyalty.

The second paragraph reads:

The tapes, played at a federal court hearing by prosecutors, did not provide any evidence that the men had the money or firepower to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and federal buildings in five cities, as they are accused of conspiring to do, or that they had any actual ties to Al Qaeda. (My emph.)

That just annoys me no end. The double implication here is both that the government has failed to actually prove its case against the men and that they are not an actual threat. But, of course, in point of fact there was never any claim that they were linked to al Queda. That's the whole point of home grown terrorism: these men picked it all up off the Internet. Al Queda litters their ideology, their suggestions, their techniques, all over the web, and just waits for men like these, men they will never meet much less personally train, to pick it up. Of course there were no ties. There were web pages.

However:

But during her presentation, the prosecutor, Jacqueline M. Arango, disclosed other new details of the case, among them that the group's leader, Narseal Batiste, had asked the undercover informant for rockets and semiautomatic rifles.

Defense attorneys, no surprise, are claiming entrapment, and that, of course, will remain to be seen. But in and of itself the lack of a link is not the lack of a threat.

Comments

[Charlie (Colorado)]

And this is a columnist in a serious publication?

Well, a columnist, anyway.

[Steve Schippert]

I think I will send Mr. Hirsh a quick note of praise and request that he cover the Iranian threat post haste. I need to know that the Hizballah threat too is an American-created mirage to sleep better at night.

How could we have been so wrong for so long, Cori?

[hhhhh]

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