He barely mentioned Osama bin Laden's name for months. But lately, President Bush has taken to quoting the Al Qaeda leader in an effort to impress upon the American people just how much danger he poses. Asked at a recent Rose Garden press conference why bin Laden hasn't been found more than five years after he pledged to take him "dead or alive," Bush replied with an edge of sarcasm, "Because he's hiding."
If Bush were asked why May closed out as the third bloodiest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq, he might say that's because they're getting shot at. It's going to be a long, hot summer, a phrase once used to foreshadow unrest in American cities that is now invoked to gird Americans for more casualties in a war nobody knows how to end.
Bush's best argument for staying is that things will get worse if we leave. But that skates over the fact that Iraq already is a breeding ground and training ground for jihadists. It could get worse—but let's not underestimate how bad it is, cautions Middle East expert Bruce O. Riedel. He expects a whole generation of jihadists to come out of Iraq, with campaign ribbons earned in Diyala province or on the streets of Baghdad, just like the Arab warriors who came back from Afghanistan in the late '80s having vanquished the Soviet Army. Riedel, who served on the National Security Council under President Clinton, joined with Lawrence Wright, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," for a discussion Thursday in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations about what appears to be a newly resurgent terrorist threat.
Riedel made the point that, unlike the Bush administration when it invaded Iraq, Al Qaeda had a plan from the beginning—one, Riedel said, that was "ruthless, evil and efficient." He ticked off the elements: 1.) isolate the United States; 2.) bomb everybody else out of Iraq, which they did, emptying the U.N. compound among others; 3.) go for the fault line of sectarian tension, which they did, creating civil war. Their objective is to drag the United States into "bleeding wars," or quagmires. Their role model is the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s. They tell their sympathizers that no one would have believed in '79 and '80 that a ragged bunch of mujahedin could bring about the end of the Soviet Union. Iraq is about wearing down the other superpower, and they believe America will collapse in time.
The fact that bin Laden has survived more than 2,000 days after 9/11 creates a mystique that Bush with all his taunts has not penetrated. Bin laden is the charismatic centerpiece of the jihadist movement, the source of its moral authority. "Without him, Al Qaeda evolves into criminal gangs," says Wright, whose book traces the group from its founding in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988. Bush likes to brag that bin Laden can't do much more than hang out in a cave somewhere. But he and his people do manage to periodically put out video messages from their hideouts. And they have a virtual caliphate with myriad Web sites able to operate with incredible speed and efficiency to document Al Qaeda attacks in Iraq and get them on the Internet where they can be downloaded with English translations.
The Bush administration has funneled $10 billion in aid to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to fight terrorism and allegedly find Osama. After five years, it's fair to ask how hard Musharraf is trying. "They're in the 'looking for bin Laden' business," says Wright. "If they find him, they'd be out of business." The Bush administration doesn't push too hard for fear of destabilizing Musharraf and perhaps ushering in an Islamist government that would then have the bomb—and might share it with Al Qaeda. So bin Laden continues to enjoy his freedom while the Iraqi people pay the price for 9/11. The failure to bring to justice the inspirational leader and primary architect of the 9/11 attacks is a political failure on the part of the administration and the intelligence community, one they have done little to fix. The FBI has only six Arabic-speaking agents, says Wright—adding that they claim 25, because they count agents who went to Middlebury College for nine weeks of language training and can order breakfast in that tongue but can't interrogate and don't know the subtleties of the culture. "This is a scandal in my opinion," says Wright. "How can you rebuild the country if you can't read the newspaper?"
Only a small minority of Muslims are attracted to radical jihadism. But a lot of Muslims like the idea of standing up to Bush and the Western influence he symbolizes. They're up against the most ferocious military machine in the history of mankind, and they're winning. They believe their fighting has reversed the last several centuries of Middle East history and that they're on the verge of victory. Riedel calls the phenomenon "extremist triumphalism." The phrase could just as easily apply to Bush. It's the kind of thinking that distorts reality, and makes for a long, hot summer.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
