War on terror analyzed
By Chris Bone
February 17, 2005
Last night, before a full Gasson lecture hall of varying demographics, Dr. Walid Phares, a scholar and professor of Middle Eastern politics from Lebanon, offered retrospective and prescient insight into Islamic culture and America's war on terror.
Having studied and taught on both sides of the Atlantic, Phares offered several cultural discernments.
Washington's "elite," ivory-tower-induced focus on foreign concepts like jihad and infidels clouded policy making until recently, according to Phares.
The American importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he said, "overshadowed and marginalized other issues" that asserted themselves on Sept. 11, 2001.
"After a country is attacked, the normal first question is, 'how?' Not, 'why do they hate us? Who are they? What do they want? When did this start? Why didn't we catch signs in '90s?'" said Phares.
Crediting Washington's desire throughout the past few decades to placate tensions with countries ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan to ensure oil availability, Phares said, "We missed the Baathist movement, Al Qaeda, Taliban, and rise of the women's movement in Iran."
The "academic, influential elite," he said, "filtered all the signs" - the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the growth of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya & Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole."
Sept. 11, however, grabbed America's attention, and the 9/11 commission ultimately said, "America had had a failure of imagination." That is, people could not imagine this had happened.
The American psyche, he reasoned, consequently underwent dramatic changes, not because of new information, but because of the scarring images of the attacks, which prompted the latent War on Terror.
"We do not have a definition of what the war or its strategy is, though," said Phares.
"Terrorism is an instrument used by ideologies" that, Phares said, formed before the founding of oil, the formation of the United States, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
These ancient ideologies, he said, "have a world view, systematic and objective, to weaken and defeat the U.S. in a first stage in reestablishing the caliphate [the historically misplaced leader of the Islamic polity and successor of Muhammad whose legitimacy split the Sunni and Shiite Muslims]."
Nonetheless, jihadist movements in the 1980s pitted the two sides of the Cold War against each other. The Soviet Union was seen as their main enemy because of its immediate encroachment to the East, its superior organization to Western capitalists, and its atheistic tendencies, according to Phares.
These movements, he said, saw the U.S.S.R.'s collapse as Allah's satisfaction, thus warranting unctuous relations with and the subsequent invasion of the West.
Phares described how many jihad networks began operating in the West and inside the United States in the early 1990s to ensure security within the "belly of the dragon."
He also said the United States' weak reprisal after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing galvanized Osama bin Laden to declare war against the United States in a 29 minute speech in 1998.
Soon thereafter, Al Qaeda struck the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Thus, "all the scenarios after 9/11 existed before," said Phares.
He described American foreign policy before Sept. 11 as selfish, naпve, and diffident because of its reluctance to use military or political action.
"We didn't touch regimes in the Middle East because it would 'complicate international relations'... One regime change would result in a tsunami," said Phares, suggesting the blocked dam of democracy fortified by oil-friendly states in the area that harbor terrorist attacks on Israel out of a fear that an Arab-Israel resolution will jeopardize their power by spreading transparent governments.
"Egypt and the Saudis advised against De-Baathification," he said, because it would have lead to their own demise.
These collapses, he reasoned, substantiate the war against terror, which "will be ended by a generation of fighting" that achieves an anecdote from within by establishing an alternative educational system formerly shielded by rich, oil-shielded regimes.
Iraqi women voters, he said, will influence the region, and this transitional society will "surely develop into a democracy" that will spread.
An "Iraqi civil society [will] produce a political culture and system that will be able to shield Iraq from the return of Baathists and Taliban-like regimes."
One already sees this transformative vigor, he said, in Syrian reformists, opposition leaders in Lebanon, and students in Iran, all part of the world's last region to receive help in democratic reform.
"The Middle East was the only region abandoned for its own status quo: Do not engage democratic forces because of oil," said Phares.
Phares concluded by noting the irony of "neo-cons in Washington helping progressive forces in the Middle East ... while liberals in the West have abandoned progressive movements in the Middle East."
(PS: the last sentence was in fact a call for progressive forces in the West not to abandon democratic movements in the region)
February 17, 2005
Last night, before a full Gasson lecture hall of varying demographics, Dr. Walid Phares, a scholar and professor of Middle Eastern politics from Lebanon, offered retrospective and prescient insight into Islamic culture and America's war on terror.
Having studied and taught on both sides of the Atlantic, Phares offered several cultural discernments.
Washington's "elite," ivory-tower-induced focus on foreign concepts like jihad and infidels clouded policy making until recently, according to Phares.
The American importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he said, "overshadowed and marginalized other issues" that asserted themselves on Sept. 11, 2001.
"After a country is attacked, the normal first question is, 'how?' Not, 'why do they hate us? Who are they? What do they want? When did this start? Why didn't we catch signs in '90s?'" said Phares.
Crediting Washington's desire throughout the past few decades to placate tensions with countries ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan to ensure oil availability, Phares said, "We missed the Baathist movement, Al Qaeda, Taliban, and rise of the women's movement in Iran."
The "academic, influential elite," he said, "filtered all the signs" - the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the growth of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya & Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole."
Sept. 11, however, grabbed America's attention, and the 9/11 commission ultimately said, "America had had a failure of imagination." That is, people could not imagine this had happened.
The American psyche, he reasoned, consequently underwent dramatic changes, not because of new information, but because of the scarring images of the attacks, which prompted the latent War on Terror.
"We do not have a definition of what the war or its strategy is, though," said Phares.
"Terrorism is an instrument used by ideologies" that, Phares said, formed before the founding of oil, the formation of the United States, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
These ancient ideologies, he said, "have a world view, systematic and objective, to weaken and defeat the U.S. in a first stage in reestablishing the caliphate [the historically misplaced leader of the Islamic polity and successor of Muhammad whose legitimacy split the Sunni and Shiite Muslims]."
Nonetheless, jihadist movements in the 1980s pitted the two sides of the Cold War against each other. The Soviet Union was seen as their main enemy because of its immediate encroachment to the East, its superior organization to Western capitalists, and its atheistic tendencies, according to Phares.
These movements, he said, saw the U.S.S.R.'s collapse as Allah's satisfaction, thus warranting unctuous relations with and the subsequent invasion of the West.
Phares described how many jihad networks began operating in the West and inside the United States in the early 1990s to ensure security within the "belly of the dragon."
He also said the United States' weak reprisal after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing galvanized Osama bin Laden to declare war against the United States in a 29 minute speech in 1998.
Soon thereafter, Al Qaeda struck the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Thus, "all the scenarios after 9/11 existed before," said Phares.
He described American foreign policy before Sept. 11 as selfish, naпve, and diffident because of its reluctance to use military or political action.
"We didn't touch regimes in the Middle East because it would 'complicate international relations'... One regime change would result in a tsunami," said Phares, suggesting the blocked dam of democracy fortified by oil-friendly states in the area that harbor terrorist attacks on Israel out of a fear that an Arab-Israel resolution will jeopardize their power by spreading transparent governments.
"Egypt and the Saudis advised against De-Baathification," he said, because it would have lead to their own demise.
These collapses, he reasoned, substantiate the war against terror, which "will be ended by a generation of fighting" that achieves an anecdote from within by establishing an alternative educational system formerly shielded by rich, oil-shielded regimes.
Iraqi women voters, he said, will influence the region, and this transitional society will "surely develop into a democracy" that will spread.
An "Iraqi civil society [will] produce a political culture and system that will be able to shield Iraq from the return of Baathists and Taliban-like regimes."
One already sees this transformative vigor, he said, in Syrian reformists, opposition leaders in Lebanon, and students in Iran, all part of the world's last region to receive help in democratic reform.
"The Middle East was the only region abandoned for its own status quo: Do not engage democratic forces because of oil," said Phares.
Phares concluded by noting the irony of "neo-cons in Washington helping progressive forces in the Middle East ... while liberals in the West have abandoned progressive movements in the Middle East."
(PS: the last sentence was in fact a call for progressive forces in the West not to abandon democratic movements in the region)
posted by Marko at 10/05/2005 05:07:00 PM
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