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July 15, 2008

Al Qaeda Is Having a Falling Out of Thieves

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

When the United States was attacked on 9/11/2001, most Americans heard about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for the first time. Many authorities on the Middle East (myself included) predicted that we would be dealing with this retrograde movement for the next half century.

I have changed my mind - as all wise futurists must do when their predictions had not taken into account unforeseen consequences. Events rarely turn out to be as bad as we feared or as good as we hoped. They might still get lucky and attack us, but they are no mega-enemy.

We Americans historically underestimate enemies until they strike - and then vastly overestimate them. Japan looked ten feet tall after their bold strike on Pearl Harbor, knocking out most of our Pacific fleet.I don't think anybody believed that Japan would have the capacity to actually conquer giant United States and occupy it; but they certainly did show European colonial powers that they could take their empires and replace them with a very nasty one of their own.Japan must have known that we were too big to knock over, but if they could quickly take over the Pacific, we might sue for a truce. It did not happen, and Japan ran out of fuel, military equipment, and civilian support well before we did; their goose was cooked.They were not ten feet tall.

The Nazis looked unstoppable in their race across Europe. Speed and military efficiency might have won them a vicious empire had it not been for two mistakes:not invading England and taking on the Soviet Union. Hitler's strategies appeared awesome - but really were not. He did not consider the stubbornness of Winston Churchill, the determination of the Americans (whom he scorned as lazy) and the doggedness of Russians, whose dictatorship was as ruthless as his. And we, who were in awe of the Germans, did not consider that they would leave nothing but enemies in their wake - nor did we see that their fanatical bigotry would drive out their smartest scientists - who happened to be Jews. There would be no thousand-year Reich.

The Soviet Union certainly looked like a frightening adversary during the Cold War. Their own people and their satellites were kept on a short leash of fear and suppression. They had a nuclear arsenal equal to ours - good enough to wipe each other out in a total war. And they had client states around the world that were as odious as our client states - Third World dictatorships that lived off of Soviet and American financial support. So what happened? The Soviet Empire imploded in 1991 - which all but one Soviet Studies expert failed to predict. A good friend of mine (a Finn) used to call them "the Ottoman Empire with Missiles." He was right. They had little old ladies with short-handled brooms sweeping the streets - but put their money into armaments. We could do both guns and butter - but they could not.

So, what has happened to al Qaeda and the other Islamists who dreamed of a world that would be conquered by Islam and ruled over by a properly pious Caliphate? They began by gladdening the hearts of Muslims around the world who were delighted to see the United States and Europe taken on. They produced a seemingly endless supply of dense young men who were willing to be suicide bombers. We were told the supply was endless, but it was not. They are down to recruiting girls now - or the mentally defective or handicapped. They are also fighting among themselves, and alienating the very Muslim masses they thought to enlist. They also learned what the Japanese and Germans learned: that they roused a sleeping giant and that we would not run away again as we had from Vietnam or Lebanon. And around the world, including Muslim countries, they are being hunted down and executed.

Evil is essentially a dunce and brings about its own demise. Terror doesn't work when you refuse to be terrified.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.

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