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Sowing the Seeds of Global Terrorism

Dicky Crueller, 12 April 2003

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As our "coalition" forces attempt to solidify a nominal victory, Muslims and Arabs worldwide smolder uneasily near a flash point.

They witnessed Shock and Awe - then dug in, watching food riots, architecture pulverized, and graphic images of dead and mutilated bodies of all ages with their insides spilling out. US embassies and a Navy base cringed as violence claimed several lives.

The ground combat, seen as more of a "fair fight", took some of the edge off. But the many challenges of the chaotic aftermath, especially the medical emergency, point to continuing global tensions.

To this new global market, al-Jazeera and other media are providing live, full-color detail they could only hear about after the fact of the first Gulf War.

Flash back. They heard about "collateral" damage. Silhouettes burned into walls by the heat of a blast in a shelter. A landscape and infrastructure scarred by bombing. Excessive cancer incidence and grotesque birth defects from radioactive munitions residue (tank debris in Kuwait so "hot" that 30% of the decontamination team have "dropped dead").

Iraqi soldiers. So many bodies burned, US forces named them: "crispy critters". They may have heard of Iraqis buried alive and smoothed over with earth movers. Or a detention area with hundreds of prisoners, fired on by Bradley tanks - presumably in error, but any survivors saw only US ruthlessness.

And they heard about the "Highway of Death", where the "Battle" of Rumaila seared for hours: with a cease-fire in effect, we sealed their escape routes, then opened fire on a 5-mile convoy retreating into Iraq - with machine guns, tank rounds, Hellfire missiles, and flamethrowers ("decimated" is the technical term, Dick Cheney will tell you). Some fled, or hid in ditches, but "we shot them," as Seymour Hersh's chronicle quotes one tank crewman.

In a press briefing, Gen. Schwarzkopf traced, with pointer and map, how we cut the enemy off and killed it. C-SPAN interviewed men stunned by the intensity of their own assault. As Schwarzkopf said, we'll never know the exact toll: some said later that most ran away; others were less optimistic. But "Stormin' Norman" didn't bat an eye when, days after the fact, he said it was probably around 10,000.

As US forces closed in from several directions, there may have been some early fire from Iraqis. But Gen. Calvin Waller makes it clear we planned all along to "destroy the Republican Guards." Hersh's investigation argues we also ignored a cease-fire line, and engaged a force posing no immediate threat, in the pursuit of that plan.

All of which went beyond the core mission of freeing Kuwait - whose losses may have numbered in the hundreds - and responsibility for which our Congress, well in advance, washed its hands of.

There are no doubt flaws in the description above - and throughout this essay. But the issue here is not the accuracy of my account. It's the perceptions, skewed and distorted as they also must be, on the other side of the world, fueled by an overall reality that gives them fundamental credibility.

While we sat here slapping ourselves on the back over a job well done, preserving democracy - as if we, the nation, really cared a whit about the people of Kuwait - half of whom still can't vote - while we rejoiced in our "victory", the harsh legacy of Desert Storm was circulating from mosque to mosque, city to city, country to country.

How do I know this? What the hell else were they going to talk about?

"Ali, what's that scar, you look terrible?"

"Oh, I cut myself shaving. Let me get you some tea."

"Ali, where's your brother, I haven't seen him yet?"

"Drink your tea, praise Allah."

I knew it on some level, as I tried to take in the twisted remains at the site of the World Trade Center.

The same site that was first bombed in 1993. I didn't see any connection then - appalled as I'd been by Schwarzkopf's horrific statistic. I bought the hazy "Muslim fanatics" explanation, the only one I'd seen.

But there's a principle in logic called "parsimony". You don't need an obscure theory when a simple one will do.

"They" may shun our Baywatch lifestyle, while they envy our swimming pools, or even our freedom of speech. But do our soldiers give up their lifestyles and freedoms for military service, with all its risks - and rush into battle - because of our assorted stereotypes about "them"?

No, we sign up to meet concrete threats, like Pearl Harbor and 911, where lives are taken.

For a Muslim Arab, Mohamed Atta sounds much like a conservative middle-class American. He'd worked as an architect, he wasn't poor. He learned German, for a second university degree, in Hamburg. His advisor said his work, on western and Islamic approaches to a renewal project in Aleppo, was excellent, "the most neutral thesis you'll ever see." And he dated a young Muslim woman there, but found her too modern.

If Atta indeed played a role in 911 - his father insists they talked the day after - it's hard to imagine him getting up every morning for two years thinking "Damn these American mini-skirts and shopping malls - they will pay."

You can always find a mercenary - or a recruit to deliver a truck bomb. But what drives an educated, disciplined individual such as Atta, to devote years of his life to the front-line management of a complex operation as devastating as 911? As it was, flight 93, and possibly others, never reached their targets - but without an Atta to ride herd, 911 might not have happened at all, at least not as we knew it.

A fellow student in 1995, Ralph Bodenstein said Atta was upset about the ongoing Bosnian War; he said Atta thought that it, and the Gulf War, showed an "outspokenly anti Islamic" bias by the UN and, by extension, the US he saw controlling it. Atta's consistent theme here is Muslim suffering due to the overwhelming influence of the United States.

Osama bin Laden's first justification, for his 1998 "fatwa" against Americans, was that Saudi rulers allowed US Gulf War staging on holy lands - after rebuffing bin Laden's own bid in 1990 to lead a liberation force of mujahedeen to Kuwait. But his second was continued US military intervention in Iraq, after Desert Storm and sanctions.

We should note that al Qaeda ("the base") is a loose affiliation of disparate groups, with their own territories, issues and goals. The interests of Atta's Hamburg cell, and others, may sometimes coincide with bin Laden's, but they needn't share all his reasons.

While Rumaila saw a spike in killing, indirect casualties may outnumber those from battlefield engagement.

Total deaths due to Desert Storm are probably in the tens of thousands at minimum. The Census Bureau demoted Beth Daponte over an unseemly estimate of 158,000, never released. Major factors were health effects of damage to power and water facilities, and Shi'ite and Kurdish uprisings. Her later study found a greater medical impact, and 170,000 dead not counting postwar violence.

And these numbers don't take into account sanctions, which some consider more harmful.

We hope "Iraqi Freedom" doesn't take a similar toll. Weapons guidance is better, but still far from perfect. Public pressure may well have influenced discretion in targeting. But drawn-out guerrilla warfare could offset that. Starvation also threatens areas deprived of water. Fleeing refugees face equally daunting uncertainty.

A backlash could still be serious in any case. This time there was no international consensus on the threat posed by Iraq, or the appropriateness of military intervention. Mounting boycotts may be only the beginning of economic repercussions.

And al Qaeda is fragmented, but a template is now etched into history for the next generation of terrorists to study. As we assess the potential threats of asymmetric warfare, 911 was stark proof that, literally, the sky's the limit.

We've all seen someone at a flash point. "I'm gonna hit him. I swear I'm gonna hit him." Looking for an exit, without much hope - overwhelming impulses allow no other focus.

How many feel this way right now, today, this minute? Tens, hundreds of thousands? A million? Men, and women, watching the carnage and thinking "I swear to Allah, I'm gonna hit him, hit them, hit somebody". Essentially what many of us were thinking, as we watched the Twin Towers blaze and then collapse, and appealed to our own gods in our disbelief.

And much of the world mourned with us that day. But in Iraq it goes on and on. How many days on end can they watch new travesties, before something snaps inside? Could a terrorist brainwashing video be much more effective?

What's the message, over the inhuman results of our 21st-century firepower, when we presume to tell the world: This is what they yearn for. They'll welcome it. Yeah, we're gonna set you free, babe.

You know you want it.

Our leaflets, radio, and other psyops "encourage" cooperation, or at least passivity ("COMPLY with our instructions and you will not be DESTROYED").

Don't struggle, it won't hurt so much.

Our pitch men in the field try to close the deal - but to the consternation of one, "They ain't surrendering. I don't know why not."

What's wrong with you, babe?

As if Americans would surrender New York, DC, or Boise - even with a pension plan wiped out, a brother unfairly in jail, or otherwise betrayed by failures of government. Because we don't defend a government - we defend our country. As many Iraqis have defended theirs.

Let's face it, "regime change" is a tricky business. In Afghanistan, the results are a mixed bag: Karzai, hang in there, dude - Dostum, buddy, wazzup?

Iraq's majority Shi'ites are wary of, if not hostile to, our overtures, already burned once. The democracy we extend implies a power shift to Shi'ites over Sunnis - no trivial pursuit. And how will Kurds, also betrayed, re-integrate? We have some good instincts, but we're clueless in other ways, and show no comprehensive plan.

Deliberate disruption will complicate these attempts. What of border countries angling to get hooks in? How long will we have to ride shotgun? And our thirst for oil must be tempered. Beyond the political challenges, such an ambitious project strains an anemic budget.

If we knew the location of serious weapons - and had credible indications of imminent deployment - we might have been better off just giving them time to vacate the premises, hit the relevant sites, and be done with it.

Because if we don't know where they are - well, we said it would take 300 years to find them. How was that going to change under occupation? With ten times as many inspectors - and a hefty security escort - we'd get it done in 30 years. Saddam would be 90 by then.

Lacking a truly imminent threat, Cmdr. Charles Boyd - decorated combat vet, ex-POW, retired four-star general, and national security activist - thought invasion was the wrong route. We gambled big-time that informants - and ultimately WMD, assuming they still exist - would materialize. We'd better be right.

Our relentless moralizing rings hollow. If Saddam's regime surpasses in raw barbarity - and Abner Louima might not concede that to Peggy Noonan - it lags in scope, ambition and creativity. And bin Laden can't touch our own venerable "partnership" with, and support for, Saddam's Ba'ath party.

As we assembled a chokehold on Baghdad, George W. Bush told us the "grip of terror around the throats" of Iraqis was loosening.

Donald Rumsfeld, who wanted to "go massive" after 911, "sweep it all up," demurs that his "goal is not to have a war."

Has the rhetoric of hypocrisy, deception, cynicism and doublespeak ever been so studiously employed as in this campaign? It's no surprise the Pentagon's PR chief hails from Hill & Knowlton, the folks that brought us the incubator babies.

Sen. Robert Byrd said "After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq." He meant the countries we tried to bully into supporting us - but it applies in spades to our shaky détente with Muslim and Arab populations, who could - someday, maybe - be our friends.

Assuming we still have the option - luxury, perhaps - of constructive engagement.

Copyright © 2003 Dicky Crueller
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