The War: Interview with Jessica Stern
I guess I'm still zig-zagging to some extent on the War, whether the U.S. is doing more harm than good, etc.
Tim Cavanaugh has an outstanding interview with Jessica Stern on the Reason web page. The occasion is Stern's new book, Terror in the Name of God.
Stern is hard to pin down as to whether she is pro- or anti--Bush. She still seems to think substantial evidence will be found both of WMDs in Iraq, and of links between Saddam and Al Quaeda. On the other hand, she fears the U.S. may be making the same kind of mistake in both Afghanistan and Iraq that it made in supporting the mujahadeen war in Afghanistan in the 1980s--that is, unintentionally making anti-Western terrorism stronger instead of weaker.
She has studied many individual terrorists in some detail, and she is obviously very concerned that they may have no motivation in common such that "we" can reason with them. Supposedly the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia was a major grievance for Bin Laden, yet it was precisely when there was a clear commitment to remove all these troops that terrorists struck at Riyadh in May. Specific grievances come and go; there may be no clear thread other than hatred of the West. Stern is confident that when Bin Laden announced his willingness to attack U.S. civilians, not just the military or officials, some of his followers left him. Stern says there is widespread hatred or fear of the New World Order, and corporate globalism, which has the potential to unite international anti-Western terrorists with those in the West who sympathize with some of their views.
Some terrorists can evidently be motivated by money, which as Stern says is reassuring. Many of them, like the Saudis who attacked the U.S., are not poor. She is concerned that "membership" is so variable and changing that free-lance haters could join up for a short time or longer. For example, home-grown American terrorists, full of hate for their own government and prepared to kill civilians, could conceivably become allies of Bin Laden's. (She doesn't think this has happened yet).
Cavanaugh gets Stern to talk a bit about the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s. She says the importance of this war still tends to be under-stated in the West. This war proved the possibility of a successful international jihad, uniting Arabs and other Moslems in a way that had not even occurred in the major wars against Israel. She says the official terrorist account is that they defeated the Soviet Union largely on their own--overlooking financial contributions from the U.S. and others. (My line is that this may have been the first (primarily) Moslem Arab victory in about 500 years--other than the guerilla actions against the Germans in World War I, led by T.E. Lawrence).
Cavanaugh says, and Stern agrees, that the U.S. should have a better reputation with Moslems than it does. It needs to sell itself more. She actually recommends more exchange-type programs to get Middle Eastern males, in particular, living and studying in the U.S. As she says, this is exactly what the U.S. government seems to be preventing.
Lots of food for thought here.
Update August 30: Ann Coulter has singled out one comment by Jessica Stern for criticism: "America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one." (Apparently from an op-ed in the New York Times, which would require a link. For Coulter you may have to click and scroll to August 28).
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