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This special issue presents Middle East Policy’s coverage of the September 11 assault and its aftermath, from analyses by practitioners and scholars envisioning a path forward, to the roots and development of Islamist violence against the West, to the misjudgments and traps of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism. Examining the origins of 9/11 and the world it created, this collection provides crucial context for the ongoing conflicts in Palestine and Iran, as well as the prospects for American regional and global influence.
We begin with the shock of the attacks and real-time visions of how the United States should respond. John O. Voll underscores the role of “sentiment pools,” groups of Muslims who share grievances and can be linked into al-Qaeda. Alan Richards concurs that such movements enjoyed sympathy in the Muslim world and must be combated by those closest to it, though Americans need to better understand the political and social bases for this support. Julia Nanay laments Washington’s decades-long focus on economic interests without efforts to comprehend the complex forces in the region, while Ian S. Lustick urges attention to issues that are not peripheral but vital to a “victory,” such as resolving the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. William B. Quandt, who participated in the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, urges a broad diplomatic agenda and not simply a long war of military, police, and intelligence actions.
The special issue then tackles the larger implications of 9/11: the roots of Islamist terrorism, recruitment and financing around the region, and al-Qaeda’s justification for killing in the name of Islam. Glenn E. Robinson traces four distinct waves of global jihad since 1979, evolving from a campaign to liberate Muslim lands into al-Qaeda’s war against the United States, ISIS’s territorial project, and decentralized “personal jihad.” Jed Lea-Henry examines Abdullah Azzam’s role in creating the ideological foundations of al-Qaeda; Anne M. Lesch sees Osama bin Laden’s turn against the United States as emerging from American actions in the region; and Quintan Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner explore the debates among Islamic fundamentalists over the uses of violence. We also take a look at the nuts and bolts of this phase of global terrorism: the recruitment of suicide bombers; the financial tools used to evade US detection; and the routes toward radicalization in Saudi Arabia.
Most important, the special issue analyzes the war on terrorism, the roads not taken in response to the 9/11 attacks, and whether and how the United States trapped itself through its strategy. Anthony H. Cordesman explores a fundamentally different approach that would downplay military action and seek to engage Muslim states politically and socially. Stephen Van Evera, comparing the American post-9/11 efforts to the forgotten lessons of World War II, castigates the Bush administration for actions far afield from international terrorism: invading Iraq and implementing “hostile policies” toward states like Iran and Syria, while engaging in “a diversion from fighting al-Qaeda, the main threat.” James A. Russell sees this as unleashing regional forces that threatened prolonged instability, and Brynjar Lia criticizes the campaigns for laying “the groundwork for a jihadi recruitment bonanza.” Although many accused the Bush administration of seeking to advance Israel’s interests through its regime-change wars, Ari Barbalat contends that US foreign policy actually bears a “great degree” of responsibility for “the radical deterioration of Israel’s external environment in the Middle East.”
The special issue concludes with a debate over the purpose of the terror war. Ian S. Lustick contends that the Bush administration never saw the threat to the US homeland after 9/11 as immediate or vital. “We are trapped in fighting an unwinnable and essentially nonsensical ‘War on Terror’ because its invention was required in order to fight in Iraq,” he argues. Lustick shows that officials from the White House to the Pentagon had spent a decade after the Persian Gulf War seeking to transform American foreign policy “toward global hegemony and military unilateralism.” Experts Edward Luttwak and Ivan Eland, and former National Security Council official Rand Beers, engage with Lustick’s provocative argument.
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